


Shiver

by thegraytigress



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Drama, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Humor, Hurt Steve Rogers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pining, Sick Steve Rogers, Tony Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-30 03:43:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 54,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10868364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegraytigress/pseuds/thegraytigress
Summary: Tony doesn't get Steve.  He can't deal with him, can't talk to him without arguing, can't even come to terms with how he feels about him.  It doesn't seem like Steve gets him, either.  Nothing ever goes smoothly between them.  Case in point: all Tony wants to do is figure out what's inside the alien artifact, and all Steve seems to want to do is get in the way, both literally and figuratively.  Just another day in their not too comfortable relationship.  Unsurprisingly, when push comes to shove like it always does, stuff explodes.  During the not so pleasant aftermath, they both finally figure some things out about each other.Like just how deep their feelings really run.Part of the Captain America/Iron Man Reverse Big Bang 2017.





	Shiver

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Avenger (art for Shiver)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10876158) by [Eloony](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eloony/pseuds/Eloony). 



> **DISCLAIMER:** _The Avengers_ , _Iron Man_ , and _Captain America: The First Avenger_ are the properties of Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Studios, and Marvel Studios. This work was created purely for enjoyment. No money was made, and no infringement was intended.
> 
>  **RATING:** T (for language, adult situations)
> 
>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** Behold, my Cap-Iron Man RBB. Many, many thanks to the lovely eloony (louxisalhama) for drawing the magnificent art that inspired this fic. Needless to say, it was right up my alley. I had a blast working with her! Also thanks to [Winterstar](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterstar/pseuds/Winterstar) for beta-reading as usual. She does a phenomenal job. Also thanks to faith2nyc for giving it a once-over!
> 
> Pen this puppy in after _The Avengers_ but pretty much before anything in Phase II. The good, old days, as it were :-). Title comes from Coldplay's "Shiver", which pretty much covers pining at its best. Enjoy, and thanks for reading!

“I thought I told you not to mess with that.”

Tony looked up from his workbench to find Captain Steve Rogers walking across his workshop with a frown on his face and disappointment in his eyes.  When he came to stand right in front of the table, he folded his impressive arms across his equally impressive chest and stared at Tony that way that he did, the way that got under Tony’s skin so much.  So Tony did in turn what he knew got under Steve’s skin so much: blatantly ignored him.  He looked back at the alien egg-thing he’d pilfered from the battlefield yesterday (in other words, snatched from the middle of downtown Chicago where the Aliens of the Week had decided to start their invasion this time) and pointedly went back to work examining it.  “How did you get in here?”

The displeasure radiated off of Steve’s stiff body.  “JARVIS let me in.”  He was still dressed in his combat uniform sans his helmet but with his shield on his back.  That uniform always looked so damn good on him, the dark blue of the Kevlar mesh accenting the lighter hue of his eyes, the sleek silver star on his chest and the red and white stripes down his midsection very clearly reminding everyone of just who he was.  The fabric hugged his body in all the right places (while providing supreme protection during battle, of course.  Right.  That really was the point behind the design, and Tony would know, since he designed it).  Even with the protective padding beneath the uniform’s outer layer, the swells and planes of his muscles were obvious, the bulge of his biceps and the hills and valleys of his ridiculous eight-pack of abs and the size of his powerful thighs and the broadness of his shoulders that tapered so enticingly into his trim waist.  And his butt.  Tony couldn’t see that with the way Steve was standing, but he could picture it pretty well.  Not that he’d stared before enough to commit that perfect ass to memory.  Not at all.

Tony caught himself staring and forced himself to focus on his work.  He huffed an irritated sigh.  JARVIS was sneaky sometimes.  The AI knew how well Tony got along with Rogers.  Not that they were enemies or anything that malicious.  They were teammates, friends even most of the time (okay, Tony had a hard time admitting to himself that he wanted that all the time, that he wanted Steve’s respect, wanted _more_ than his respect).  It was just that they didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of things (in other words, most things).  It had been about six months since the Avengers had formed and saved New York from an impromptu alien invasion, and in that time, they’d gone from a ramshackle, uncoordinated mess of warring personalities and opinions to a well-oiled, streamlined group of superheroes.  A lot of that had to do with Captain America.  Steve knew how to run a special ops team, that was for sure.  Tony had spent most of his life firmly believing that Captain America was a jerk, a class-A self-righteous, sanctimonious bastard, a stupid, wooden, useless symbol for which Howard Stark had traded Tony’s childhood.  Captain America wasn’t, though.  _Steve_ wasn’t.

Tony had realized that right away, even when they’d been tense and bickering (as in literally throwing down the proverbial gauntlet at each other) on the helicarrier.  Of course, realizing something and accepting it were always two different things.  He was damn good at that first part.  The second thing?  Not so much.  He had a lifetime of mistakes and shallow relationships and pain and loneliness to prove it.  It wasn’t always easy, letting someone else take the reins.  He hadn’t been lying at all when he’d said back before the Avengers had formed that he wasn’t a team player.  He absolutely was not.  He was impulsive, brilliant but arrogant (he could admit that, too), and very much interested in his own ways of doing things.  That was not at all conducive to the current arrangement, which was Steve leading the team, Steve directing the fights, Steve calling the important shots and Steve making the big decisions.  And it wasn’t that Steve wasn’t capable.  He was _more_ than capable, every bit the tactical genius the legends had called him, smart and cunning and charismatic in a subtle, unobtrusive way.  But he was incredibly stubborn, and he didn’t tolerate his orders not being followed, particularly on the battlefield.  He was rigid in his morality sometimes, with everything very black or white, right or wrong.  Tony didn’t operate that way.  Most people didn’t, in fact, like Clint and Natasha, but they were a lot better about ignoring their own opinions (and egos) and following along.

Tony wasn’t.  Not a team player, like he said, but also not a soldier or a spy or a SHIELD agent.  He hadn’t reached to the status he had as one of the richest, smartest, and most successful men in the world by bowing to someone else’s ideas.  So he and Steve butted heads a lot.  It didn’t help, too, that while Steve ran the team on the battlefield, Tony was the one funding the operation and developing all their tech and supplies.  His Tower had become the Avengers’ home base, with everyone essentially living there at least some of the time.  This arrangement had never been formally discussed or decided.  They’d just fallen into it, with Tony bankrolling the team and Steve running it, so the division of power wasn’t always clear.  They were a work in progress, no doubt about it, and their tension on the battlefield and in briefings had gotten them both heated more than once.  Tony honestly found Steve infuriating as hell sometimes with his quiet personality and unassuming disposition.  He prided himself on being able to read people, but he had a hard time reading Steve.  He had a hard time figuring out where he stood with Steve.  He had a hard time figuring out where he _wanted_ to stand with Steve.

No, that wasn’t entirely true.  He knew what he wanted.  He was staring at it.  He’d committed it to memory, and that didn’t just mean Steve’s perfect butt and perfect body and perfect everything else.  It was his smile and his laugh, hard-won sometimes.  It was Steve’s sassy side, often even harder to bring out than his smiles but always well worth the effort.  It was that fond look he got when Tony said something he really appreciated.  It was those moments when they worked together like they were _meant_ to be together.  He knew what he really needed, how much he _liked_ bantering and bickering with Steve when it was good-natured and light.  How much he liked how Steve complemented him, when he was honest about it.  That was the first thing he realized, recognized, admitted to himself.  He liked the dichotomies of their relationship.  Steve’s down to earth sensibilities against Tony’s outlandishness and extravagance.  Steve’s quiet, solemn demeanor contrasted with Tony’s love of noise and chaos.  Steve’s cool temper and humble upbringing and unfamiliarity with modern tech and pop culture bucking up to Tony’s hot moods and wealth and how much he _thrived_ in this advanced world.  Opposites attracted and all that, fascinated and enticed and enthralled, and he wanted Steve close, wanted Steve with him, wanted _more_ in the quiet places of his heart _,_ wanted it _so bad_ that the mere thought of it was enough to make him shiver, only he didn’t know if Steve cared about him as anything more than a teammate at best or a thorn in his side at worst.

Which hurt and ramped up Tony’s insecurities something fierce.  He thought their debates, even when they were as explosive as oil flashing into water, could be fun, flirty even, but he couldn’t tell if Steve felt the same.  He smiled, laughed at Tony’s jokes and antics at times, and seemed relaxed and happy, but it was damn difficult to figure out.  Not being able to figure something out frustrated and irritated the hell out of him.

And when he got frustrated like that, he shot his mouth off.  “Yeah, well, JARVIS doesn’t own the workshop.  I do.  So if you’re here to lecture me, au revoir.”  At least he’d get a nice view of Steve’s posterior on the way out.  “Don’t let the door hit you on the ass because that’d really be a crying shame.  A crime against the nation really.  Treason.”

Steve flushed.  God, he looked good when he got all flustered and angry.  “I ordered you to take that thing over to SHIELD.”

“Lo, I didn’t deign to follow it.”

“Stark, SHIELD’s handling the investigation on this!”

“Don’t get your patriotic panties in a twist,” Tony replied.  Steve scowled, and Tony watched just long enough to see it with a sort of giddy satisfaction before turning back to his word.  Steve always burned brightest when Tony’s jabs had some sort of sexual innuendo mixed in.  Whether it offended his golden generation manners (although the guy was a soldier in the army during World War II, for crying out loud) or it (maybe) played on Steve’s own feelings, he reacted _every_ time.  It was glorious.  Smug, Tony manipulated the holographic displays hovering above and around the alien egg-thing.  He really had to find a better name for it than that.  “I’m just checking it out.”

“In other words, playing with a bomb,” Steve said disapprovingly.

Tony cocked an eyebrow.  “Ah, come on, Cap.  Aren’t you even a little curious why the aliens were dropping these little things all over the city?”

Steve grimaced.  The battle yesterday had been mostly a joke.  In terms of alien invasions, it hadn’t really ranked among the more dangerous ones.  Aside from dropping the egg-things around the city streets, the aliens (these weird, thin, gray dudes that looked about as potent as stickmen) hadn’t done much to hurt anyone.  Their weapons had been pretty weak, too.  Iron Man had escaped the battle pretty much unscathed because of that.  In fact, all the Avengers had, and they’d thwarted the aliens’ efforts to attack Chicago pretty handily.  Even without Bruce (who was across the ocean in India on some sort of humanitarian effort – he hadn’t been able to get back in time to assemble), they’d shut down the assault with no civilian casualties and minimal property damage.  Thor and Tony had destroyed the giant robot easily, and Steve, Natasha, and Clint had taken care of the aliens running amuck in the streets.  The whole thing had been over in a matter of minutes, with the invaders getting back into their ship and running with their tails tucked between their legs.

SHIELD had swooped in to do its normal post-battle containment, running interference between the press and the Avengers, controlling the spread of sensitive information, and, most importantly, gathering up all fallen alien tech like greedy little scavengers.  Thor had pretty much obliterated most of the egg-things, incinerating them with reckless abandon.  Tony had managed to get one, had managed to sneak it all the way back to the Avengers’ quinjet in fact, and flown halfway back to New York before Steve had caught on.  Rogers had very bluntly told him to take the egg to SHIELD HQ in Times Square immediately when they set down in the city.  Then he’d thankfully been summoned away by Fury for a debrief.  That’d given Tony the opportunity to whisk his prize to the Tower.

And now it sat on the workbench in front of him.  There was basically nothing remarkable about it.  It was an ovoid, seamless and without any blemishes on its dull, gray surface.  It was about the size of a basketball.  Tony had been studying it off and on all day and to no avail so far.  Steve stared at it dubiously.  “No, I’m not curious.  Not at all,” he answered, though his tone wasn’t as taut and angry as before.  “Shouldn’t you have it, I don’t know, _not_ near all this other stuff?”

This other stuff was all the unfinished projects scattered around the workshop.  New repulsor cannons for Iron Man and new concussive arrows for Hawkeye and a new model of Widow’s Bite for Black Widow.  Plus all of his tools were all over everywhere.  It wasn’t a mess (Tony wasn’t a total slob), but to someone as in love with military precision and neatness as Steve, it probably looked it.  Tony preferred to call it a state of controlled chaos.  “It’s fine.”

Steve scowled a little.  “Stark–”

“You going to lecture me on how SHIELD’s doing all their tests behind blast doors while wearing hazmat suits?  I’m not a complete moron, you know.”

That scowl deepened.  “I didn’t say you were.”

“I already had JARVIS scan it.  Even if I can’t get it open, the exterior isn’t impenetrable.”  Tony waved his hands at the holographic terminal, bringing up the results from a couple hours back.  “Infrared signatures are dark, so there’s no heat source, ergo no power supply.  No moving parts that we can detect.  That makes the odds of it being a bomb pretty low.”

“Not really,” Steve argued.

Tony rolled his eyes.  “Yes, really.  I designed weapons for a living, remember?”

“Not with alien technology.”

He sighed.  “Could you just trust me?  Please?  Unless they’ve found ways to alter the fundamental constants of thermodynamics or stuff a nuclear warhead into something with, like I said, no moving parts, they’re not making a bomb out of nothing.”  Steve stared at him, his expression cool and unhappy.  “Okay, you know what?  I don’t trust SHIELD.  We don’t know what this thing does, and SHIELD has a bunch of them.”

That wasn’t entirely bullshit, and they both knew it.  Steve’s face loosened a little.  They’d talked in the past about SHIELD’s duplicity.  The whole “building weapons using the Tesseract” thing hadn’t sat well with anyone, Steve in particular.  Steve wasn’t so openly insubordinate with Fury and his cohort as Tony was, but he wasn’t stupid, either.  The Avengers worked with SHIELD to keep the world safe, and Steve was certainly willing to follow orders to get the job done, but he watched Fury shrewdly, suspiciously.  Tony figured the “SHIELD has ulterior motives” card was a good one to play to get Steve to side with him.

But Steve _wasn’t_ stupid.  He just stared dubiously at Tony, and the weight of his disappointed gaze did its job.  Tony sighed in irritation, throwing his hands up in surrender.  “Fine.  They suck at their jobs.  They’ve had all evening yesterday and almost all day today to figure out what the eggs do, and they haven’t, because they’re all morons.  I mean, they had to outsource working on the Tesseract to Selvig.  They had to steal Foster’s notes on the Bifrost to make heads or tails of that.  Hell, they had my dad working for them for years to even get their sorry asses off the ground.”

“Don’t hold back on your opinion there.”

“And I’m curious, alright?  Even if you’re not.  So let me fiddle with it.”

Steve actually quirked a little smile.  “You know what they say about curiosity.”

“Yeah, not actually true.  And cats are stupid.”  Tony leaned back to appraise the egg.  “I don’t think there’s _anything_ inside it.  Nothing solid, anyway.  Maybe?  Nothing liquid.  JARVIS doesn’t think so, either.  So it’s probably not a bioweapon.”

“That’s not a comfort.”  Tony darted a glance at Steve to find him staring at their mysterious find for the first time with more than just wariness.  He looked up, too, caught Tony’s eyes, and gave another grin, this one more teasing.  It faded lightning quick, though.  “Fury wanted all the alien tech in confinement at HQ for a reason.”

“That’s nice.”

Steve sighed shortly.  “I’ll say it again.  I really don’t want you doing this here.”

Tony sighed, too, his more exaggerated and long-suffering.  “Not just my workshop, you know.  My Tower.”

“Your city to endanger?”

“Jesus, Cap, come on.  You really think this stupid Easter egg has a bomb in it?  Something capable of doing that amount of damage?”  Tony shook his head and grabbed a screwdriver.  “In case you failed to notice, Thor was having a grand ole time squishing the hell out of these things.  Blowing them up and crushing them and practically stepping on them.  If they were all that dangerous, full of poison gas or whatever, don’t you think we would have seen it then?”

Steve’s eyes flashed, and faster than Tony could prevent, he snatched the tool right from Tony’s hand.  “Maybe, but, like I _just_ said, I don’t want you screwing around with this thing _here._   I’m not just following orders.  Call me crazy or stupid or whatever you want, but it’s your _life_ , too, and I don’t like to see you needlessly endangering it.”

Tony didn’t like that, the genuine, sincere concern in Steve’s eyes.  It made him uncomfortable.  Annoyed, he grabbed a hammer and banged it loudly on the exterior of the egg.  A dull, rattling hum responded.  Steve jerked in surprise, probably expecting it’d blow up or some stupid nonsense, and took a step back.  Tony felt equal parts a jerk and pleased with himself for getting that reaction, for cracking Captain America’s seemingly stoic and unwavering mask of bravery.  “See?  Hollow.”

Steve glowered.  That made the scales tip more towards feeling like an asshole.  “Then what does it matter if you get it open?  If it’s empty.”

“I said _hollow._   Not empty.”

“There’s a difference?”

Tony shook his head.  “God, you have no vision.  What if…  What if there’s some sort of data inside?  A map or something to their planet?  The keys to their technology.  Their history or an encyclopedia of their race.  Or something else.  Maybe energy I can’t pick up.  It could be _anything_.  Something exciting.”

“Why in the world would an invading alien force leave little eggs around with maps inside them?  What, like an Easter egg hunt?”

“They had those back in your day?”

“Damn it, Tony, that doesn’t make any sense!  They were dropping them all over.  That means it’s either a weapon or something they needed for the battle.”  Now Tony scowled.  That did make more sense.  Still, his curiosity was pretty much driving, and it wasn’t going to be appeased by assumptions, even logical ones.  “Take it to SHIELD.  Let them figure it out _safely._ I mean it.”

“Nuh-uh.  I’m actually on the verge of a breakthrough here.”  Steve coolly cocked an eyebrow.  Tony grinned.  “See, JARVIS and I have mapped out the properties of the metal, and I think maybe, just maybe, if I pass the right amount of current through this particular plane here…”  He gestured around the lower section of the egg where it rested on the little testing platform he’d constructed.  “…it’ll make the alloy malleable, so we _should_ be able to break it open.”

Steve grimaced.  “No.”

“Come on!  Live a little.  It’ll be fun.  Like opening up a present.  My usual partner in crime is indisposed with his do-goodering halfway across the world, preventing a pandemic or something like that.  You’re the only one here.”  That was true enough.  The battle had gone so well yesterday that Fury had immediately sent Romanoff and Barton out on assignment, some sort of super-secret spy thing that’d last a few days.  They were basically out of communication.  Thor had gone back to Asgard last night, claiming he had important business that he’d had to put on hold in order to help with the invasion.  So off he’d gone.  That left Rogers and him, alone in the Tower for the immediate future.  “So you’ll have to do.”

If Steve frowned any harder, his face was going to get stuck that way.  His brow was furrowed, lips pressed tightly together and downturned, eyes narrowed with misgiving as he stared at the egg.  Tony almost found it cute, and he might have been if not for the sheer number of times that frown had been thrown at him.  Eventually Steve sighed in submission.  “This is a really bad idea.”

Victory was so sweet.  “The best ideas are always bad ideas.”

“That’s not true.  And when we’re done here?  You’re taking this thing right over to SHIELD.  And you’re telling them everything we find out and giving them all your data.”

“Sure.”  He agreed to those conditions with his fingers crossed mentally.  “Here, hold this stuff.”

The conversation quieted for a few minutes as Tony set everything up.  Steve had his arms full of a bunch of wires and cables, and Tony was picking and choosing from them as he hooked up a power supply capable of producing the voltage necessary based on his calculations.  Of course, that voltage was a little on the high side (dangerous, in other words, if something were to go wrong), but he wasn’t about to tell Steve that.  Steve was smart, and he was picking up on modern science, math, and technology at a rapid rate, but he wasn’t exactly a physicist or an electrical engineer.  He probably wouldn’t figure that out, so it was fine.  Ignorance was bliss and all that.

Tony tightened the cables, stringing them around the workbench.  Then he fastened some clips onto the egg, using a rubbery adhesive to hold them in place while still maintaining contact between the two metallic surfaces.  Steve shook his head.  “And what exactly are those going to do?”

“Told you.  We’re zapping the hell out of it.”

“You know, you’re not really selling this plan of yours like that.”

Tony grinned cheekily, which earned him a little smile in return.  That felt nice, gave him pause, actually made him think twice about doing this because Steve wasn’t sure.  He banished his hesitation, though, and finished hooking everything up.  Now the egg-thing was all ready to go, sitting on the little platform and held in place by clamps with the cables in position and primed to deliver current right to the mysterious surface.  Tony stood back a bit, looking over his work and liking it.  “Okay.  We’re solid.”  He pulled open the drawer of his workbench and took out a couple pairs of safety glasses.  One he handed to Steve, and Steve seemed utterly shocked.  “What?  I’m not completely reckless.”  Steve took the glasses, unfolded the arms of them, and slid them on.  Tony beamed, jittery with excitement, and put his own on.  “By the way, it goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway.  Don’t touch anything.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

“Alright.  JARVIS, let’s do this.”

“Yes, sir.  Beginning the sequence.”

The power supply hummed to life, and electricity began flowing from it through the cables and clips into the egg.  If Tony’s calculations were correct, the current should make the shell of the thing brittle after a few minutes of exposure.  Then it’d be easy enough to crack it open.  Tony watched the holographic displays, monitoring the power outputs from the generator and the readouts coming from the sensors around the platform.  Those few minutes went by, and nothing happened.  Tony gave it another thirty seconds, scrutinizing the egg (staring at an egg, for crying out loud – how was this his life?) before sighing.  “JARVIS?”

“This does not appear to be working,” the AI declared.

 _No shit._   Tony glanced over the readouts.  The power supply could go higher.  The cables could take it.  He let another couple seconds go by, squinting as he checked the egg again for any cracks or signs of destabilization.  Nothing.  It _should_ be working, though.  “Jack it up, J.  Increase another hundred volts.”  JARVIS immediately adjusted the power supply.  Still there was nothing.  Tony shook his head, a little frustrated that this wasn’t going to plan.  “More.”

“Sir–”

“You think that’s a good idea?” Steve asked, raising his voice in order to be heard over the hum of the equipment.

Tony touched the holographic interface to increase the power himself.  Still nothing.  “Damn it,” he muttered, shaking his head in stupefaction.  Maybe he’d been wrong about this?  _No._   That didn’t make sense.  He pushed it up a little higher.

“Sir, I would not recommend much more.  I’m detecting some minute cracking and structural–”

JARVIS’ voice was cut off by a terrific whine.  “Tony!” Steve screamed.

There was no time to do anything other than duck, which Tony did.  He brought his arms up over his head.  His blood went cold, heart stopping in his chest, and an even louder boom shook the workshop.  It was almost deafening, a deep thud that seemed to vibrate everything, and it took Tony a second or two of staying completely still in its wake to even think to move.  He forced himself to suck in a breath.  A strange, cloyingly sweet smell suffused the air, which seemed pretty weird, so he looked up from beneath his arms.

 _Shit._   The egg-thing had exploded.  Of course.  That bang couldn’t have signified anything else.  A smoldering hunk of its bottom half was what remained on the platform.  The top of it was just gone, blown apart by some obviously incredible pressure from within.  What was strange, though, was the bright, neon orange _glop_ covering it.  It was thick and syrupy and obviously the source of that sickeningly sweet aroma.  The mess spilled out the top and rolled languidly down the sides.  Splatters covered the platform and parts of his workbench.

But most of it was all over Steve.  Clearly Steve had tried to block the blast from hitting Tony with his shield.  How he’d managed to move fast enough to get it off his back and over the explosion, Tony didn’t know, but there the shield was over the remains of the egg, the normally shining red and silver disc covered with the goo.  Tony watched it languidly drip from the shield’s perfectly rounded edge, feeling pretty dismayed and reluctant to look at Steve’s face.  Look he did, though.

Yep, Steve’s face was covered, too.  It was all over him, slick and viscous and awful, coating his hair and his cheeks and his mouth.  The entire front of his uniform was wet and glistening.  Almost all of the mess had ended up on him, and he didn’t look pleased.  _At all_. 

“Ah, shit,” Tony murmured.  “Are you okay?”

For a second, Steve didn’t say anything.  He wasn’t speaking, wasn’t moving.  Tony couldn’t really see his eyes where they were behind the slime covering the goggles.  A horrific thought slashed through his head – _it’s dangerous oh God I screwed up I screwed up so bad it is a bioweapon!_ – but then Steve lowered his shield and raised his other hand to wipe at his mouth.  His lips were just dripping with the stuff.  “Damn it, Tony.”

“I – shit.  I’m so sorry.  Just…”  JARVIS was already shutting everything down, which was good because Tony was pretty fantastically stumbling away to the supply closet down from the workbench.  He wrenched it open, snatched a few towels, and rushed back.  “Here!  Here.  You should go to the shower – we installed a safety shower, didn’t we, JARVIS?  For emergencies?  God, Steve, I really am–”

“Save it,” Steve grumbled.  He took the towels but made no move to go to said safety shower just outside the workshop.  His shield hit a clean spot of the workbench with a rattle, and he went to work wiping his face.  “What the hell is this?”

Numbly Tony shook his head.  “Uh…”

“It is a high carbohydrate, high sugar, high salt solution,” JARVIS coolly replied.  Tony looked down and saw the glop had conveniently run down into the workbench’s scanners.  The computers had already begun breaking down its chemical composition.  “There are a few molecules in the liquid that I cannot recognize, but for the most part, it would appear to be some sort of nutrient-rich syrup.”

Tony looked at the readouts JARVIS was displaying before him, at the molecules turning and twisting around in the three-dimensional workspace.  He was utterly dumbfounded.  “Huh?”

“I believe what was inside the object was a very fine powder.  There is a hint of a granular substance on some of the pieces of the shell.  I suspect the chemical composition is very similar to the wet slime covering Captain Rogers.”

Steve wiped at his face more, the towel coming away coated in orange.  “This stuff is… gross.  I’ve never tasted anything so sweet.”

“Yeah, well, don’t,” Tony replied.  “JARVIS, is it…  Is it safe?”

“It seems so.  As I said, I cannot identify some of the molecular chains, but I also can detect no known toxins.”  That wasn’t as much consolation considering from where this thing had come.  Then again, with the super soldier serum flowing through Steve’s veins, the odds of it hurting him were pretty slim.  The serum Doctor Abraham Erskine, Howard Stark, and the rest of the Strategic Scientific Reserve had pumped into Steve as part of Project: Rebirth in 1943 was seriously powerful stuff.  Not only had it transformed Rogers from a sickly, skinny, short stick of a young man into the tall, strong, muscle-bound Captain America, but it had made him completely immune to illness as well as the effects of drugs, alcohol, poisons, and anything else that tended to make normal humans sick.  If there was anything in the slime that was dangerous, it probably wouldn’t hurt him.

Key term being probably.  The blue scanners were working over the remains of the egg.  Tony spotted one of the broken pieces from the blown-out top on the workbench next to Steve’s shield.  JARVIS was right.  There was a faint hint of a very fine orange powder on one side of the jaggedly broken piece.  He grabbed a set of pliers and grasped it, careful to keep it away from his face.  He set that to the auxillary scanning bed.  JARVIS explained more.  “Once the exterior of the object began to crack and air entered the interior, the powder likely began a fast, chemical reaction with some component of the gas, the oxygen, perhaps, or the water vapor itself.  I will need to analyze the substance more to know for sure, though it is likely the heat from introducing the massive amounts of electrical current through the shell that contributed to the reaction.  If it was the air alone, none of the powder would remain.”

“Yeah,” Tony agreed.

“With the heat, the powder liquefied, boiled, and the pressure expanded radically.  It led to the object bursting.”

Tony supposed that made sense.  What didn’t make sense was what the power was to begin with.  Steve wiped more of his face clean before scrubbing the towel over his head.  He winced, spitting into the towel.  “It’s so sweet it’s disgusting.”

JARVIS said, “I have a theory, if I may?”

Tony handed Steve another towel.  “By all means.”  It wasn’t like he had anything useful to add.

“I would wager that these would-be eggs are not eggs at all.  The aliens deposited them throughout the city, yes?  I believe, given the high sugar and salt content of the powder, that these pods served as replenishing stations.”

Tony frowned, utterly stupefied.  “What?”

“Admittedly this is conjecture given we know nothing of the aliens’ physiology or diet, but if we are to assume they share the same sorts of nutritional requirements as humans, the solution bears a striking resemblance to the ingredients in, well, an energy drink.”

Tony turned to stare at the remains of the egg-thing.  His brain tripped over what JARVIS said because it sounded so dumb and ridiculous.  “Wait a minute.  You’re saying it’s…  It’s a can of Red Bull?  Gatorade?”

“Either is an apt comparison.”

 _Huh._   Tony had to admit it made sense in a way.  Drop these egg things around the battlefield, allowing your soldiers to rehydrate and reinvigorate themselves as necessary.  They didn’t even have to go to the proverbial sidelines (or whatever) to get a drink.  Just find an egg and drink it down (or snort it or suck it or who knew what).  Hell, maybe these aliens needed something in that solution to help survive on earth, to deal with the different ratio of gases in the air or the temperature or pollutants.  The possibilities were endless, and JARVIS was right: without knowing more about their physiology, all they could do was wonder about it.

And wondering was probably moot.  So was lamenting the fact that the egg hadn’t had anything cool in it, no special data or energy or really anything interesting at all.  Tony lamented it a little all the same.  He’d been looking forward to finding something awesome and lording it over the idiots at SHIELD.  That was if he even chose to tell them.  He could have just lorded it over Steve, hit him with a big, fat, and extremely satisfying “I told you so”.

As it was, though, all he’d managed to do was get Steve covered in some alien-variant of a neon orange sports drink.  He stared at the captain, watched him try to scrub the sticky mess off more, this time away from the star on his chest where it was splattered especially thickly, and Tony just couldn’t help himself.  He laughed.  Steve looked up.  A particularly large glob dripped down his perfect nose and perfect lips and perfect chin before dripping with a _splat_ to the table.  Tony laughed louder.  “You got hosed down with alien Kool-aid.”

The scowl was back, and it was pretty hard.  “No thanks to you.”  Tony guffawed, going back to the supply cabinet to get some trash bags.  When he came back, Steve snatched them away roughly and started cleaning up the mess.  “And no reason to expose you to it.  Even if you deserve it.”

“Nah, Cap, come on.”  He knew he shouldn’t push it.  He did feel bad, but, damn, Steve looked funny.  And it was strangely vindicating that there was _nothing_ dangerous in the mystery egg after all.  “Orange looks great on you.  Orange is the new blue?”

“I have no idea what that means,” Steve snapped.  He was shoving the remains of the egg into the bags before briskly mopping up the mess with the towels.

“You look like an Oompa Loompa on steroids.”

“No idea what that is!”

“No, no,” Tony said, giggling more as he pulled his tools away.  “Wait.  You should be thanking me.  You know how the winning team dumps Gatorade all over the coach after a big game?  I just did that for you!  Since, you know, we didn’t yesterday after our victory.  So yay!  Go, team, go!”  Steve’s eyebrow twitched.  Tony knew he should stop, but he didn’t.  “One more?  Please?  Okay, here.  Check it out, Steve.”  He grinned.  “An _egg-_ splosion.”

Steve shoved the nearly full bag into the trash chute.  “Alright, you know what?  I’m done here.”  He yanked his shield off the table, put it on his back again, and stalked off toward the doors.

Tony made himself stop laughing, even if it was ridiculously hilarious to watch the orange glop dripping from the shield onto Steve’s butt.  He was being a jerk, and he knew it, so he ran around the workbench.  His shoes nearly stuck to the floor it was so sticky, but he charged after the other man.  “Wait!  Wait, Steve.  Wait.”

“What?” Steve snapped.  “If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like to wash this off.  That okay with you?”

“Fine, fine,” Tony said quickly, “but let me…  Let me make this up to you.”  He didn’t know what he was doing.  His mouth was running disconnected from his brain again.  “Let me order you a nice dinner.  Anything you want.  And we can…”  _We can what?_   He and Steve didn’t exactly share too many interests.  They weren’t close.  Come to think of it, Tony didn’t really even know what Steve liked to do besides run and train and workout.  Come to think of it, he really didn’t _know_ Steve all that well.  And, come to think of it, recognizing that hurt.  This was crazy, though.  His people skills sucked big time.  He knew he could be charming, and he knew people loved to be around him (and all too often that was because of his power and money), but frankly when it came to Steve…  He wanted more than that.  _What the hell am I doing?_ “We can hang out.”

Steve stared at him with nothing but anger on his face.  “Hang out?”

Suddenly Tony felt like a complete asshole.  He didn’t even know what he was proposing.  “Yeah, hang out.  Eat.  Watch a movie maybe.  I’m sure there are few thousand you haven’t seen.”  The little jab at Steve’s whole “man out of time” thing didn’t sit well, though to be honest it seemed like the irritation was disappearing from his face.  “Hey, we can watch _Alien._   That’s pretty apropos.  You’ll feel much better that it’s only slime all over you.”  Then Tony grimaced at the thought of what _could_ have happened.  “Or maybe not.  You seem like maybe you’re not so angry at me anymore?  Maybe?  Probably shouldn’t push my luck.”  Steve’s jaw unclenched further, and his blue eyes softened.  Tony took that as a good sign.  He tried for a bright grin.  “Come on.  There’s no one else around.  Nothing else to do.  It’ll be…”  He wasn’t sure what.  _Uncomfortable.  Awkward.  Not enough._   “Fun.”

Steve searched his eyes a moment like he was trying to glean some sort of ulterior motive.  Tony wasn’t sure he had one, at least nothing beyond wanting to spend time with him.  When he’d first blurted it out, it hadn’t felt good or right at all.  Now…  If Steve said no, it’d hurt.  It’d really hurt.  Tony kept his expression cool despite his suddenly pounding heart and lungs that had gone too taut to breathe.  For a moment, they just stared at each other.  There was tension between them, that tension that seemed to be there so often.  It was frustrated and angry and teeming with something neither of them acknowledged or seemed to understand.  At least he didn’t.  Tony wouldn’t admit it, but it was delicious in a way, something he hungered for yet at the same time something that wasn’t entirely fulfilling.  No matter what it was, it was throbbing.

Eventually Steve looked away, and Tony could have sworn he was blushing under the orange glop caked and drying all over his face.  “Yeah, okay.”

Relief mixed with horror and regret.  That pretty well summed up what Tony was feeling.  “Okay.”

Steve didn’t say anything more before turning and leaving.  Tony waited until he heard the glass doors of his workshop hiss shut.  Then he went back to the mess, where his bots were already busily cleaning.  He sighed.  “That what you wanted when you let him in here?”

JARVIS paused a moment before answering almost haughtily.  “Given that you and Captain Rogers are alone in the Tower for the next few days, I thought that maybe this would be a fine opportunity for the two of you to improve your relationship.”

Yeah, JARVIS knew how well he got along with Rogers.  He knew, too, the things Tony couldn’t admit to himself.  JARVIS was smart like that.  “You’re an asshole,” Tony muttered as he started to clean himself up.

JARVIS was nothing but deadpan.  “I learned from the best, sir.”

* * *

As good as Steve looked in his uniform, there was something especially enticing about him in civilian clothes.  It went without saying, but he was far less Captain America and far more Steve Rogers (even though Tony was realizing more and more that those two things weren’t mutually exclusive).  Right now he looked… _soft_ was a good word for it, fresh from the shower with his hair slightly damp and tousled, wearing jeans that hung low on his hips and a heather gray t-shirt.  Apparently, Steve owned a ton of those.  Tony felt like he never saw him wear anything else.  Not that he was complaining, mind.  At least he seemed to have ditched his old man attire, all those slacks and button-down shirts and such.  Natasha had probably helped him modernize his wardrobe, although Steve seemed to think he was still dressing his pre-serum body because he bought his shirts about two sizes too small.  They left nothing to the imagination.  God bless America.  Anyway, he was soft and lax and unguarded.  A little flushed.  Steve caught Tony staring at him as he was coming into the common room.  “What?  Did I miss some of it?”  He wiped a hand through his hair, mussing it more.  He normally kept it so neat and militarily tidy.

Tony snapped out of it, turning away to hide his blush.  “No.  You’re clean.  Got it all.”

Steve frowned and came around the huge, expensive sofa.  Christ, he wasn’t even wearing socks.  This was about as close to relaxed as Steve got.  “Then what?” he asked again.

“Nothing.”

The frown got deeper.  “If you don’t want to do this–”

“No, I want to.”

“–because I have mission reports to write and things Fury needs my help with.”  Steve stared at him.  “So it’s not a big deal if you don’t.”

Was he giving Tony an out?  Giving himself an out?  Both?  That made Tony’s nerves rattle.  He didn’t know why this was making him so anxious.  It wasn’t as if he’d never spent time alone with Steve before.  They had on occasion, when Avengers business ran long or something and they found themselves chatting about other things.  This, though?  This felt like…  Well, like a date.  Like something planned and purposefully initiated with more than strictly platonic intentions behind it.  Tony had spent the entire time in the shower working himself into an anxious tizzy and wondering what the hell was wrong with him.  Once the realization that he’d essentially asked Steve out set in, he spent the duration of his time getting ready trying to convince himself it _wasn’t_ a date.  Not really.  It was just two friends, two teammates, spending some time together and trying to get to know one another more.  Trying to bury the proverbial hatchet between them better.  That was it.  Nothing special.  Nothing more than that.

Yeah, that was crap, and trying to tell himself that their would-be evening was just an olive branch didn’t make him feel any better.  Nor did the fact that Steve seemed as uncomfortable with this whole thing as he was.  Tony summoned up some stoicism because he was _not_ this pathetic even if he did have a tiny, insignificant crush on Captain America (God, no one could _ever_ find out about that – he’d delete JARVIS before he let the AI so much as whisper a _hint_ of this secret to _anyone_ ).  He was going to make Steve decide if this went on, because even though he was playing it cool, his stomach was tied up into knots and he felt almost dizzy.  “Up to you.”

“Really, Tony, it’s fine if you–”

“Up to you, Cap.”

Steve stared at him, scrutinizing, and Tony stared right back.  There was that tension again, crackling like electricity between them, like there was some sort of storm or epic battle of wills going on.  Then Steve sighed.  “Let’s get dinner then.  I’m starved.”

Tony grinned, hoping that seemed as confident as ever.  “What do you want?”

Steve sat on the couch.  He shrugged noncommittally. “What do you want?”

“This is me making it up to you.  It defeats the purpose if I pick.”

“I don’t care.”

“But I want you to.”

“I don’t.  Not at all.”

The frustration came back pretty quickly.  “Wow, this is a first.  You letting me make a call?  Whoa.”  Steve huffed and shook his head in irritation.  “I mean, all you do all day is decide everything for everyone.”

Steve’s eyes flashed a little.  “Yeah, so maybe I don’t want to decide now, huh?”  Tony stared at him, feeling all hope of this evening being pleasant slipping away.  God, this was always what happened.  They didn’t get along.  Steve bothered him, and he got snarky and harsh.  What the hell was it that made Rogers so hard for him to read?  Was Steve _mad_ mad?  Or just tired and snippy?  Or…  Steve seemed to realize things were eroding too, so he sighed more slowly.  “Look, Tony, I really don’t care.  I’m hungry and you have great taste and you know much more than I do about what’s good.  So _you_ pick.  I always like whatever you decide.”  Tony flushed with the unexpected compliment, and Steve seemed to realize what he’d said.  He smiled.  “When it comes to food, anyway.”

That was said teasingly, and immediately the tension evaporated.  Tony thought about it for a couple seconds, considering the choices.  Maybe it was stupid, but he really did want this to be special.  A nice evening.  Steve deserved one and not just because he’d been slimed.  He worked really hard.  Underneath all their bickering, Tony could appreciate that, just how much Steve took on.  Lately it’d been back to back missions for SHIELD on top of the alien fight in Chicago and a few terrorist cells the Avengers had taken down the week before.  Steve looked burned out.  Sure, he hid it really well, but Tony liked to think he knew him well enough to notice.  Dealing with the big and conflicting personalities on the team (plus SHIELD) was a fulltime job in and of itself.  He felt a little bad and again not just because he’d slimed Steve.  Maybe it wasn’t in his nature to cooperate, but he certainly didn’t make anything easier.

“JARVIS,” Tony called in a moment of inspiration, “put an order in to Ayada.  One of everything.”

“Right away, sir.”  The AI sounded smugly pleased.

Steve’s brow furrowed in confusion.  “What’s that?”

“Thai food,” explained Tony.  “Willing to bet you haven’t gotten to that on your list.  You’ll like it.  Really good noodles.”

Steve nodded and offered up a bit of a smile.  “Okay.  Thanks.”

Tony felt pretty good about himself.  He headed over to the refrigerator in the rec area and pulled out a couple of beers.  “This okay?”

Steve shrugged.  “Water’s fine.”

Tony rolled his eyes and grabbed a bottle of water in addition to the beers.  He brought it all back to the expansive living area.  It seemed weird not to sit with Steve, but then it was weird to sit with him, too.  It didn’t help that the couch was absolutely huge.  When the team had an occasional movie night, the room was plenty big to accommodate them all.  Now it just seemed conspicuously and uncomfortably empty.  Tony eventually split the difference, parking himself maybe a foot away from Steve on the adjacent couch cushion.  Close, but not that close.  He handed Steve his water.  “Movie?” he prompted. Steve opened his mouth, and Tony knew what he was going to say before he said it.  “Yeah, you don’t care.  At least give me a genre to work with.”

Steve considered it a moment as Tony told JARVIS to turn on the huge, flat glass display.  It was practically like having a private movie theater because everything was so big.  Steve pressed his lips together.  “No horror.  And not that thing you talked about before.”

 _“Alien_?  It’s a classic.”

“Yeah.  No movies about alien eggs exploding on people.”  Steve gave Tony a sneaky, sideways grin.  “And not _Aliens_ , _Alien 3_ , or the stupid one with the space station.  I’m not completely ignorant.  Clint told me about them.”

“They’re Clint’s kind of movies,” Tony agreed.  “Alright, so no aliens.  And no eggs.”

Steve downed about half of his water in one gulp.  Tony tried not to watch the muscles of his long throat work as he drank.  “Are there really movies about eggs?”

Tony popped the top of his beer bottle off.  “There are movies about everything.  J?”  The screen suddenly filled with a bunch of seemingly random titles.  Tony looked them over.  Lord, this was dumb.  “ _Humpty Dumpty!_ ”

“Hey, Claudette Colbert,” Steve said, sitting up a little.  JARVIS selected a particular entry from the list.  It was a movie called _The Egg and I._   “Saw her in _Boom Town_ a few years a…”  He caught himself.  “Back in 1941 _._   Good movie.”

“And ancient history,” Tony smartly declared, reading the information on _The Egg and I_ and finding it was made in 1947.  “We’re trying to bring you into the twenty-first century, Cap.”  It was an unspoken initiative among the Avengers: help Steve acclimate to the here and now.  Even Thor participated, though he was about as knowledgeable about modern times as Steve himself was.  “So let’s focus on that.”

“You know, not everything from ‘way back’ is useless,” Steve muttered tautly.

Tony gritted his teeth and swallowed down a retort.  He really wasn’t interested in yet another debate and/or lecture about how important the past was.  That was a surefire way to end this evening with both of them angry at each other, and the mood had just started feeling better.  _Patience,_ pleaded the sensible part of his brain.  Much to the surprise of seemingly everyone in his life, he was in fact capable of listening to it.  “You want to watch this then?”

Steve’s eyes lit up.  Lord, of course he did.  Tony knew he shouldn’t be irritated; the guy was practically constantly bombarded with things to learn and watch and hear and experience in the twenty-first century.  Were their roles reversed and a little touch of something familiar was dangled in front of Tony’s nose, he was pretty sure he’d want to have it.  But the movie wasn’t even in color, for crying out loud.  Surrendering, Tony sighed softly.  “J, put that one on.”

The lights in the room dimmed, and the display came to life.  The two of them settled into a not quite comfortable silence.  It took Tony all of a few minutes to realize this was some sort of old-fashioned romantic comedy.  It was about a young, married couple after World War II who bought a dilapidated chicken farm, and that led to all sorts of zany hijinks.  It was supposed to be light and funny, and it was (somewhat), but the whole post-war thing made a couple alarm bells go off in Tony’s head.  He kept stealing glances at Steve, trying to see if the subject matter was upsetting him, but Steve appeared calm and unbothered.  If this was reminding him of what he’d lost not more than six months ago, it wasn’t obvious.  Then again, Steve played things close to his chest on the regular.  At first Tony thought his total lack of emotion regarding his temporal displacement was just more evidence of how dumb he was, like the enormity of what had happened to him was simply beyond his brain’s processing capabilities.  Now…  Well, now he thought Steve just bottled stuff up.  He never bled on anyone, never let himself be a burden.  He never even _let_ any of them tend to his injuries.  Whenever he got banged up in battle, he made sure the rest of the team and any civilian casualties got the medical attention they required, but as far as his own injuries went…  Steve never sought care for them.  The serum let him get away with that.  He was the perfect commander, the perfect soldier, the perfect shield.

_Not possible._

The movie was stupid, and it wasn’t terribly interesting.  Definitely not his cup of tea.  Steve looked bored, too, but he wasn’t saying anything.  He was probably too proud or polite or both to complain.  About twenty minutes into it, Tony couldn’t take it anymore, and he knew it was maybe opening a can of worms, but he was jittery and frustrated.  “You think you’d ever want to do this?”

Steve jolted a little, like he’d forgotten Tony was there.  He gathered himself with a little draw of breath through his nose.  “Do what?”

“I don’t know.  Buy a farm, I guess.”

Steve still didn’t turn to him, watching the movie for a few more seconds, but it was pretty obvious he wasn’t really paying attention.  He was considering the question.  “Are you asking if I would have wanted to do this before?  Or if I’d ever want to now?”

Tony winced, taking a sip of his beer.  He supposed he meant before, but that seemed like a dick thing to ask.  He never understood the logic of stuff like this.  He needed to get to know Steve better, and to do that, he had to navigate a minefield of things he should already know about so he could avoid them.  It was insane.  He could back out, he supposed, and drop it, but what the hell?  That wasn’t his style.  “Both.  Either.”

For a second, it seemed like Steve wouldn’t answer (and maybe that’d be for the best).  But he shifted a little and sighed.  “Before…  Yeah, I guess.  I don’t know.  I never really thought about it too much.  Before the serum, no woman looked my way twice, so the chances of me getting hitched were pretty low, let alone having a family, _let alone_ moving to a farm.  Think the work’d probably have killed me, anyway.”  That wasn’t said self-deprecatingly.  “And after the army turned me into Captain America, there really wasn’t time to think about life after the war.”  _No time and no strength._ Tony imagined trying to dream about going home in the middle of a nightmare like World War II would have been rather difficult and depressing.  Steve sighed, eyes glazed a little like he was thinking about it now.  “But if I hadn’t died…  Yeah.  Yeah, I would’ve wanted something.  A normal life.  Family.  Maybe with…”  His voice trailed off, and that hazy look to his eyes got worse.  He looked down.

Now Tony felt like a grade-A asshole for bringing this up.  Definitely not worth it.  Steve took a second to gather his composure.  Then he sat up and finished his water.  “Well, as you always tell me, shit happens.”  Steve smiled and turned to Tony, and Tony couldn’t help but laugh.  Steve didn’t swear like that much.  Hearing him do it, the paragon of American virtue and integrity actually curse like everyone else, was oddly nice, like a secret between them or something.  “And now?  After battling aliens on the regular seventy years in the future alongside an alien demigod, a man who turns into a rage monster, and the son of someone I knew as a young bachelor just six months ago…  Well, farming sounds quaint but boring.  Kinda like this movie.”  Tony laughed more.  Usually Steve mentioning his father pissed him off something fierce, but right then it felt nice.  Warm and fond and affectionate.  Steve grinned.  “What about you?”

“Eh.”  He supposed he should have anticipated that real conversation required give _and_ take, as in he needed to take his turn.  He leaned forward and set his beer bottle to the table with a clank, trying to hide his discomfort.  “Not really my style.”

Of course Steve would ask.  “What about Ms. Potts?”

“Not her style either.”

“Well, I wouldn’t think so.”  Tony glared at him, though Steve didn’t get why really.  “Not that she couldn’t, Tony.  She seems like she could do anything she set her mind to.  She’s a really classy dame.  A real powerhouse.”  _Yeah._   Steve shook his head, squinting like something was suddenly occurring to him.  “What are you doing here anyway?  It’s Friday night.  Shouldn’t you two be together?”

Tony sighed.  “She’s in Malibu.”

That probably came out tenser than he intended.  Steve frowned.  “Okay.”

“She’s…”  Well, maybe it’d feel good to say it finally.  “She’s in Malibu and we’re not together tonight because we…  We broke up.”

Steve jerked and turned to him.  For a second, he didn’t speak, and Tony could feel his care and concern like it was tangible force.  “Tony…  Geez.  I’m so sorry.  When did that–”

“Couple months ago,” Tony said.  It had hurt at the time, but in retrospect…  “It’s for the best.  She’s running the company, and I’m doing this, and…  Well, that whole carrying-a-nuke-into-a-wormhole-and-almost-dying thing…  It can put a strain on a relationship.”  Steve smiled softly, and there was understanding and sympathy in his eyes.  A lot of it, and it was all warm and real and genuine.  That spurred Tony on.  “I can’t ask her to deal with this.  She doesn’t get it, and that’s okay.  I can’t expect her to.  We’re still friends, still close.”  Tony shrugged.  That seemed trite, whatever everyone said after an amicable breakup (and theirs had been that, amicable and comfortable and very much mutual), but surprisingly it didn’t hurt.  It really hadn’t too much in the weeks since Pepper had kissed him goodbye and made him promise to be careful.  That more than anything told him he’d made the right choice.  “It’s fine.  What’re you gonna do, right?”  He grinned.  “Shit happens.”

Steve stared at him, eyes narrowed like he was trying to analyze him, trying to figure out if he was really okay.  He sighed, returning his gaze to the screen.  “I don’t like this movie.”  Then he grinned, too.  “Got anything else?”

Tony chuckled and relaxed.  “Definitely, Cap.”  He brought up a list of comedies and told JARVIS to help Steve find one while we went down to the lobby to collect their food.  By the time he was back, JARVIS was explaining the finer points of a dark comedy to Steve, who was soaking it in like a rapt pupil being shown a huge and awesome new world.  Tony smiled as he brought their food over and spread it out on the coffee table.  He went back to get a couple plates, some silverware, and more bottles of water.  He returned to find Steve was looking over the array off steaming tins happily.  Tony handed him a plate.  “Wait till you try the pad thai.”  He offered up the water bottle, but Steve just grinned, took the beer Tony had brought him before, and flicked off the top with his thumb before taking a hefty swig of it.  Tony nodded in satisfaction and went back to get some more beer.

Not long after that, they were sitting side by side on the couch, plates loaded with spicy noodles and rice, with _The Big Lebowski_ playing on the screen in front of them.  Tony was a tad concerned when Steve picked this one that Steve wouldn’t be able to follow along (or wouldn’t get it – the humor was not the usual sort), but he laughed at the funny parts and seemed to understand well enough.  There were times where he asked JARVIS to pause the movie so he could have Tony explain something to him.  Tony liked that.  He liked explaining, and he liked watching Steve smile and laugh and shovel noodles into his mouth and guzzle down about four bottles of beer like nothing.  He liked it all, even if he was paying more attention to Steve than he was the actual film.  As the movie went on, they also ended up closer together.  Every time one of them leaned forward to reload his plate or grab another bottle of beer, they inexplicably scooched nearer to each other until their thighs were almost touching.  It was the most comfortable they’d ever been around one another for certain.

By the time the movie ended, the food was gone.  Tony was glad he’d ordered extra since there wasn’t a bite of it left and Steve looked a little disappointed.  He thanked him profusely, commented a couple times just how tasty it was, and Tony didn’t doubt for a second that he meant it.  Without much preamble, they picked another movie off JARVIS’ list and settled in.  The lively conversation and excited enjoyment from the first one died pretty quickly.  It was almost eleven o’clock, and with the craziness from last few busy days and their bellies full and the lights dark, everything got quiet and lethargic.  Tony was half watching the movie and half running through some calculations in his head to realign Iron Man’s thrusters for sharper banking during high-speed flight when he felt something touch his shoulder.

He turned to see Steve’s head there.  It seemed the other man had fallen asleep.  Tony was surprised for a second, stiff and uncomfortable.  He leaned back a little to try and get a glimpse of Steve’s face.  Sure enough, he was out, eyes closed and lips parted as he breathed slowly and evening.  This was… weird.  Weird but nice.  Really nice.  Honestly, Tony had never seen Steve like this.  He’d never seen him sleep.  Even when the team had dragged itself back to the Tower after a rough night exhausted and half-dead, Steve had never just nodded off like this.  He looked peaceful and handsome and so… _young._   Christ, now that Tony noticed that, he couldn’t stop thinking about it.  Steve was, what?  Twenty-five?  Quickly he did the math in his head.  Twenty-seven.  _Jesus._   Twenty-seven and a veteran of the last world war _and_ separated from everything and everyone he knew _and_ dumped into the future only to be saddled with running a team of superheroes that was a barely controlled mixture of chaos most days.  And through all that, Steve seemed to be basically handling it himself.  He was shouldering all of this, and he was doing it alone.

It didn’t seem fair.  That made Tony’s mixed up, twisted up mess of emotions get only more confused and jumbled.  He sighed, settling deeper into the couch, hesitating because he wanted to put his arm around Steve, but that seemed pretty bold.  It’d be okay, though, wouldn’t it?  Wouldn’t telegraph too much.  It was just a friendly gesture between two teammates who were having a “bonding” moment.  Resolved, he worked his arm out from under Steve’s side and wrapped it around his back.  In his sleep Steve snuggled – _snuggled_ – closer, cuddling into Tony’s side, and pretty soon Steve’s head was under Tony’s chin and Tony was rubbing a hand up and down his back and pretty unabashedly wondering what it would feel like without the shirt.  He closed his eyes, breathing in the plain, masculine scent of Steve’s shampoo.  He liked Steve’s weight against him, the tickle of Steve’s silky, soft hair on his chin and neck, the firm skin and muscles under his palm, the heat of him.  This was…  This was more than nice.  It felt right, good.  Something he’d maybe dreamed about once or twice.  He could…  Yeah, he could definitely get used to this.

Maybe…  _No._   He didn’t know what Steve thought or how he felt.  And Steve wouldn’t feel anything about him, anyway.  Steve wasn’t…  _No._  

But this was okay.  Steve was sleeping.  He wouldn’t know.  He wouldn’t notice if Tony melted into the moment, closed his eyes, and let himself dream.

Tony fell asleep, too, with the movie still playing in the background and the light from it washing over them.  It was weird that it came so easily, no troubles or anxieties or nightmares.  He didn’t really think about it, though, or anything else, going down into a warm, untroubled void where he was vaguely aware that he wasn’t alone, that Steve was there against him.  That made him content.  Comfortable.  Steve was beside him.

When he woke up, it was to a kink in his neck and Steve basically laying on top of him on the couch.  Somehow he’d slouched to the side, and Steve had gone with him, and the other man was pillowed on his chest with the light from the arc reactor turning his blond hair into platinum.  The movie was long over, the screen having gone into power saving mode.  The common room was very dark, the only light from the city beyond where it spilled inside through the expansive windows.  Tony blinked the cobwebs from sleep from his eyes, trying to focus.  “JARVIS,” he croaked, “what time izzit?”

“A little after one in the morning, sir,” the AI answered.

Tony tried to sit up a little.  Between the pain and Steve’s weight pinning him, he didn’t go far.  Tony pushed at the other man a little.  God, he was heavy.  “Cap?  Cap?”  Steve didn’t so much as stir, dead to the world on top of Tony.  Tony grimaced, increasingly uncomfortable. “Come on, Rogers!”  He shoved at Steve more, annoyed.  Steve still didn’t respond, didn’t wake up, didn’t so much as twitch.  Irate, Tony pushed at his shoulders and head.  “Up!  You’re crushing me here.  Come on!”

Nothing.  That felt wrong.  Yeah, Tony had never seen Steve sleep before, but didn’t the serum keep his senses honed all the time?  It didn’t seem possible he could slumber through someone else poking and pushing him.  Whatever traces of sleep that clung to Tony’s brain were utterly dashed.  Worried, he tried to sit up more to get a better look.  “Steve?”

Steve _still_ didn’t answer.  Now a cold jolt of fear stabbed through Tony.  He put more effort into squirming out from beneath the soldier, digging his heels into the couch to push himself back.  Steve did nothing to help him, didn’t react at all.  _Oh, God._   Heart pounding, Tony scrambled onto the floor beside the couch, leaving Steve fairly well prone on the cushions.  He wasn’t moving.  “JARVIS, give me the lights!  Now!”  Illumination suddenly blasted through the common room, driving back the peaceful darkness.  Steve’s eyes were tightly closed, his lips still parted, his long, muscular form basically crumpled and seemingly lifeless.  _Lifeless._

Tony was shocked into useless floundering.  “Oh, God, God, God…  What the hell…  What the hell…”  His hands trembled as he jabbed his fingers into Steve’s neck, searching frantically for his pulse.  “What happened?  What happened?”

“Sir–”

“His heart’s beating!  Steve?  Steve!”  It was pointless, but he shook Steve again, rougher and rougher with his mounting panic.  Steve was limp in so far as a two hundred fifty-pound super soldier could be.  Tony’s efforts jostled him, but he still didn’t wake.  He had a pulse, a good, strong pulse, and Tony could feel him breathing, could feel air on his hand when he placed it in front of Steve’s mouth.  “He’s breathing.  He’s breathing!”  He _was_ breathing, and it was slow, steady, and even.  But he wasn’t waking up.  _He wasn’t waking up._

Tony’s mind was racing, terror sinking icy claws into his heart.  _What is this?  What what what–_ “Oh, God, JARVIS…”Dawning realization left him shaking.  It had to be what was inside the egg.  That slime.  That slime that had gotten all over Steve’s face, into his mouth and nose.  It wasn’t just some innocuous nutrient solution.  Steve had been exposed to something, something not from this world.  Some sort of alien poison.  Toxin.  _Disease._

Something that had made him lose consciousness.

JARVIS came to the same horrifying conclusion.  “Do not touch him, sir!”  At the AI’s sharp command, Tony yanked his hands away as if Steve had burned him.  He clambered back, smacking into the coffee table and knocking empty beer bottles left and right.  “He may be contagious!  You cannot touch him!”

“Jesus…”  Tony stared at Steve’s lax face.  This was his fault.  They’d assumed that the slime was safe.  They’d made their theories about it and _assumed._   And he’d assumed the serum would protect Steve no matter what.  He should never have let Steve just walk away after being exposed.  He should never have screwed around with the egg to begin with.  _He should have never._   “What, J?  What do I do?  _What?_ ”

Thankfully JARVIS was still thinking, even if he wasn’t.  “You need Iron Man, sir.  The suit will protect you.”

“He was freaking laying on me, JARVIS!”  There was a wet splotch on his chest.  “And drooling on my shirt!  And I was right there when the egg burst.  I’ve probably already been exposed!”  The thought sent chills down his spine.

“It is possible,” JARVIS conceded, “which is why you must also be tested.  However, unless the substance was airborne, which seems unlikely given how it reacted with air and heat, it did not come in direct contact with you.  Still, you must be careful.”

“Oh, hell,” Tony muttered.

“There is no reason to increase the risk of exposure.  Furthermore, I doubt you will be able to take Captain Rogers to SHIELD without the suit.”

 _SHIELD._   Shit.  He needed to take Steve to SHIELD.  SHIELD had the facilities to deal with this.  All sorts of awful things were going through Tony’s head, slamming through his thoughts at what felt like Mach One.  _He needs to be quarantined.  He needs biomedical specialists.  He needs treatment.  God, there has to be a treatment._   This was insane, the shock of it leaving him reeling.  There was something seriously wrong with Steve, something that could have affected them both, and they needed help.

But…  “I’m taking him to medical.”

“Sir?”

“Medical here.”

JARVIS immediately argued with him.  Of course.  Because what he’d proposed was incredibly _stupid_.  “Sir, the Tower is not equipped with the proper quarantine equipment.”

Tony was already up and running, tearing out of the common room.  Leaving Steve, even for a second, seemed wrong and dangerous, but JARVIS was right about this at least.  He couldn’t move him without the armor.  He had his phone out, and he was initializing Iron Man with a press of his thumb to the finger print scanner.  The suit was a couple floors down in the armory.  He didn’t wait for the elevator, rushing to the stairwell.  “Keep an eye on Cap!” he ordered as he thundered down the steps.  His voice echoed in the cement chamber.  “Damn it, this is insane…”

“Yes, it is!” JARVIS sharply agreed.  “Sir, the Tower is _not_ capable of handling an alien contaminant–”

“You didn’t argue all that strenuously about it yesterday!”

“I did object numerous times, which you chose to ignore.  Furthermore, now it is blatantly apparent we are dealing with a biomedical hazard!”

“Look, if it was all that dangerous, I would have gone down first, and I feel fine!”  Tony was breathless as he burst onto the floor with the armory.  The lights immediately flickered on.  “And, like you said, it’s probably not airborne.  So I’m taking him down to medical, getting him in the scanner, and doing blood tests.  I can run blood tests.  You can help me.”

“Sir–”

“I’ll send all the data to Banner.  He can help me figure out what’s wrong.  Steve’s vitals are good, so it’s not an emergency.”  His own logic tasted sour in his mouth.  “Cap’ll be okay here for now.  Besides, he doesn’t like doctors.”  That was probably true.  It made sense considering Steve’s behavior when injured.

However, JARVIS was too smart not to see through his bullshit.  “This has _nothing_ to do with Captain Rogers’ preferences and everything to do with the fact that you do not wish to admit to Director Fury that you made a mistake.”

Tony grimaced.  That made it sound so bad.  Then again, he’d basically endangered the life of Captain America because he’d been too arrogant to follow proper protocol.  So there was that.  “I did make a mistake, okay?  I can admit that!”

“To me.”

“You’re…  Just…  Argh!  Let’s just not jump to conclusions and get started down a path that ends in a headache for everyone, okay?  If I take him there, they’re going to do all sorts of crazy stuff and follow stupid exposure guidelines and run tests and put him alone in a white room where his only contact is people in white suits.  Let’s not do that to him unless we need to.  Come on.”

JARVIS paused a second.  Tony could picture him sighing and rolling his eyes, as if an AI could do such things.  “As you say, sir.”

Iron Man was sleek, beautiful, and thrumming with power in its alcove.  The second Tony came close, the suit unfolded to encase him, the pieces opening to take him inside.  The feel of the armor around him always gave him so much comfort.  He fired the boot jets and blasted outside through the armory’s emergency launch pad and into the cold, rainy night.  It took just a couple seconds to get back up to the floor with the common room.  Through the windows, Tony could see Steve still prostrate on the couch.  He hadn’t moved an inch.  _God._   “And Steve’s gonna be fine.  Until I know for sure that something more serious is going on here, he can stay in the Tower.”

“As you say,” JARVIS said again.  His tone was practically dripping in reproach.

Tony ignored him.  The doors to the balcony slid open, and Iron Man jetted through them.  He set down right next to the couch, staring at Steve’s unmoving form before drumming up the courage to touch him.  He carefully rolled Steve to his side.  Iron Man’s sensors were able to pick up things he couldn’t before.  Steve’s vital signs really were strong, his pulse a fairly normal rate and his breathing steady and his temperature normal.  That made Tony feel better about this crazy and (okay) slightly self-serving plan of his.  He didn’t waste any more time, scooping Steve’s body into his arms.  It was pretty ungainly; Steve was big and long, but at least the weight wasn’t much of a problem.  He shifted him from a bridal style carry to a fireman’s hold, and then he went back out the balcony.

Medical was a few floors down, right near the quinjet hangar and the long awning that served as the jet’s landing pad.  JARVIS opened the way for him, turning things on as he rushed inside.  The infirmary was as high-tech as the rest of the Tower, but it could really stand an upgrade.  Initially he’d installed it just in case he hurt himself tinkering (not that he ever did that, but JARVIS was usually quick to remind him of all the times he’d burned or bruised or cut or banged himself up and all the times he’d almost done worse).  Now that the team was operating out of the Tower on the regular, they needed more.  He was grimly realizing that right now.  The space wasn’t terribly huge, just a single bed.  As JARVIS had complained before, it lacked any capacity to quarantine someone who’d been exposed to an unknown biohazard, which Tony decided also needed to be fixed right then and there.  There was a mobile scanner, though, and he knew Bruce’s lab a couple floors down had the capacity to run bloodwork.  So he was fairly confident he could do this.

He set Steve to the single bed, and Steve flopped limply onto it.  He was wet from the drizzle.  “Steve?  Steve, can you hear me?” Tony leaned closer, hoping the other man would just wake up and save them both from this mess.  No such luck.  Gritting his teeth, he quickly went about getting Steve drier and hooked up to the monitors.  It’d been a while since he’d used any of this equipment (basically never), so it took a second of running around like a chicken with its head cut off to get everything going.  A couple minutes later, Steve had sensors on his forefingers and forehead and machinery all around the bed.

Tony had JARVIS send the output right to the HUD.  Now he had even better, more accurate readings of Steve’s vital statistics.  They really were fine.  “JARVIS, this is spooky.”

“Indeed, sir.  Admittedly, I have no baseline data with which to compare Captain Rogers’ current measures, but for a normal human, he shows no obvious sign of illness.”

“Well, there’s _something_ wrong,” Tony snapped irately.  The _lack_ of anything obvious was only making him more worried because Captain America didn’t just pass out.  Captain America didn’t just _lose_ consciousness.  “And the fact that he got splattered with alien slime a few hours ago can’t be a coincidence.”

“I would wager not.”

“So blood tests.”  It was really the next logical option.  If something had gotten into Steve’s body, that’d be the easiest way to tell.  And Tony did know how to do it.  In theory.  He’d done it to himself enough times when the palladium in the arc reactor had been poisoning him.  How hard would it be to do it to someone else?  While wearing the suit?  “Easy,” he murmured, and he went to gather what he needed.

Not long after that, he had a couple vials of Steve’s blood.  Steve remained soundly unconscious through the whole procedure, not reacting at all to the tightness of the tourniquet around his right bicep or the repeated prick of the needle as Tony fumbled to get it inserted.  At least his arms were veiny, so it was easy to find one.  Tony felt a little bad about doing this without Steve’s consent, but these were exigent circumstances and Steve wasn’t exactly capable of giving his okay, so he just threw that guilt on top of the already heaping pile of guilt he was ignoring in the back of his heart.  Vials in hand, he set up the scanner and had it start its work, JARVIS maneuvering the automated probes over Steve’s limp body.  Then he left Steve sleeping with a blanket over him and the bed secured.  He headed to Bruce’s lab, where he left Iron Man at the door but JARVIS insisted he don appropriate laboratory personal protective equipment (which he did irately).  Banner’s lab took up almost a whole floor, and it was dark and idle.  Again the lights winked on the second Tony stepped inside.  “Gonna need some direction here,” he reminded as he set the samples of Steve’s blood carefully to a lab bench.  Lord, what the evil of the world would give to get its greedy hands on Captain America’s blood…

“I will direct you, sir, though this is hardly my area of expertise.  Perhaps it would behoove us to contact Doctor Banner,” JARVIS tightly suggested.

Tony thought about that.  His ego bristled and not just because he didn’t like admitting he couldn’t handle something.  Bruce would give him shit about what happened.  If Tony came at the other man with data, he could hopefully shorten that inevitable part of it.  “Let’s see what we can do on our own.  Hurry.”

So they hurried.  Pretty soon Tony had a dozen tests going (hopefully all going correctly).  While he settled in to wait a few minutes for results, JARVIS said, “It would also be helpful to have samples of the original substance with which Captain Rogers came in contact.  Your workshop has already been cleaned and sanitized by the bots, but the remains of the alien device that Captain Rogers threw into the trash chute have not yet been incinerated.”

Tony groaned.  Digging through the garbage at two in the morning.  Yeah, this sucked.  He went and did it though, getting back into the armor before accessing the trash collection in the Tower’s basement.  The mess from his workshop was fairly well segregated from the rest of the refuse at least.  Thankfully it didn’t take long to find the trash bag Steve had used to clean up the remains of the egg (and thankfully with Iron Man on, he didn’t have to smell anything).  With an eye constantly on Steve’s vitals, he hauled the bag back up to the lab.

He was just finishing with getting the slime sample into the electron microscope with JARVIS guiding him when the AI’s tone turned decidedly more concerned.  “Sir, Captain Rogers is awake.”

Tony’s head snapped up from the lab bench.  He glanced at the readouts on the HUD, and sure enough, Steve’s pulse was picking up and his blood pressure was increasing and his EEG readings where shifting.  That was until all the feeds went dead.  Tony’s heart lurched painfully in his chest.  “Oh, shit!  Is he–”

“He is ripping the sensors off,” JARVIS declared, “and being rather irate about it.  I suggest you get up there.”

Relief coupled with grim anxiety made Tony’s stomach clench and his head ache.  _Damn it._   Time to face the music on this.  “Send everything to Banner,” he ordered.

“Hurry, sir.”

Taking a deep breath, he left his tests running and rushed back up to the infirmary.  Steve was sitting there on the bed when he got there, arguing with JARVIS.  “I feel fine,” he snapped, peeling the last of the sensors off his arm.  “I don’t need to stay here.”

“Captain, you cannot leave.  You were exposed to an alien substance that has caused you to lose consciousness.  This is a serious situation.”  JARVIS sounded equal parts aggravated and worried.  “You must lay back down.”

“I’m _fine,_ ” Steve said, doing the exact opposite of what JARVIS said and standing.  He seemed completely normal for a second, but then he took a step and completely crumpled.

Tony raced across the room, catching Steve just as he went down.  “Whoa, whoa!”  He wrapped his arms around Steve’s form, more than slightly disturbed about how Steve was basically slack against Iron Man.  “Easy, Cap.  You okay?”

“What the hell…” Steve breathed.  He was trembling, and Tony saw the perspiration breaking out all over his face.  “My legs just…  I don’t know. Went weak.”  He pulled away from Tony’s embrace, grabbing onto the edge of the bed for support.  Tony let him go.  He seemed steady enough now.  He shook his head, eyes glazed with confusion.  “What happened?”

Even more worried, Tony grasped his arm.  “You don’t remember?”

Steve sighed shakily.  “Did I fall asleep?”

“Yeah, and you wouldn’t wake up.  I kept trying to get you up, and you just–”

“How’d I get here?” Steve squinted, obviously confused as hell.

“Captain, you should lay down,” JARVIS advised again.  Steve was muddled and worried enough that he actually went without a fight, letting Tony help him back onto the infirmary bed.  “In fact, I firmly recommend you allow Mr. Stark to take you to SHIELD–”

“No,” Steve said curtly.  He settled down, and Tony couldn’t help but notice that he was trembling and not trembling in a way that seemed from shock or nerves.  “I don’t want to go to SHIELD.  I’m fine.”

Any vindication Tony might have felt from given his earlier assertions was lost in his concern.  Steve was _really_ trembling.  “Cap, maybe…  Maybe JARVIS is right.  I mean, it might be for the best.  Something screwy’s going on here.  That slime might have done something to you.”  Steve turned and regarded him with piercing blue eyes, ones that were pretty well full of anger and a touch of fear.  Tony swallowed thickly, feeling like a guilty asshole.  “I ran some blood tests.”

Steve frowned, affronted.  “You did what?”

Yeah, that murky feeling of shame was getting worse and worse.  It seemed pretty jerkish talking to Steve from behind Iron Man’s faceplate, but at least that was hiding how guilty he was probably looking.  “You passed out on me!  I had to check it out.”  Steve’s lips pressed tighter together.  He looked patently unhappy, maybe even a little betrayed.  “Anyway, I sent everything to Banner, okay?  Banner, not SHIELD.”

“No one else knows?”

That seemed a strange thing to be concerned about right now.  “No.  Nobody.  And Bruce will probably call us here any second, so why don’t you just take it easy?  Let me…  Come on, Steve.  Lay down.  Let’s get these sensors back on you.”  Steve didn’t seem to follow him for a second, and that only further amped up Tony’s concerns.  He nudged Steve’s shoulder with Iron Man’s glove.  “Come on.”

Steve seemed to snap out of it.  “What’s with your armor?” he grumbled, laying back on the bed obediently.

Tony pulled the blanket up and over him before reattaching the electrodes to Steve’s skin and placing the pulse oximeter on his index finger.  “Don’t know if you’re contagious.  Figured I was a reckless asshole once today.  A second time seemed like a bad idea.”

Steve sighed, staring up at the ceiling of the infirmary.  “Well, that’s great.”

“Besides, you’re heavy as hell.”

A breathy grunt came from the bed.  “Had a big dinner.”  Tony couldn’t help a little smile.  If Steve was joking, he couldn’t be that mad (or that sick).  Aside from the weird trembling, he seemed okay.  The computer immediately resumed reporting his vitals again, and JARVIS streamed them across the HUD.  His pulse was okay, respiration okay.  Blood pressure was high, but this wasn’t exactly a calm, comfortable situation.  Tony could forgive that.

A tense quiet suddenly dominated the room.  Steve was squirming on the bed, shifting around like he couldn’t lay still.  Tony knew that feeling because he was doing the same, fidgeting uselessly.  Waiting uselessly didn’t suit either of them.  Tony sighed.  “You want some water?  J, do you think it’s okay if he has some?”

“I could not begin to wager a guess,” JARVIS crossly replied.  Clearly he was none too thrilled that both Steve and Tony had ignored his sound advice about involving SHIELD.

Tony decided to ignore his irritation and fetch a water bottle from the little minifridge outside the room.  He came back and handed that to Steve, who was still restless.  “You okay?  You feel anything…  I dunno, weird, I guess?”

Steve took the water bottle and unscrewed the cap.  “No, I’m good.  I feel fine.”

That sounded genuine, but Tony didn’t know.  Was it _too_ quick, _too_ easy?  Maybe.  He didn’t know if Steve would be honest with him, if Steve trusted him enough to admit if he wasn’t feeling well.  That made the ugly murk of shame and guilt inside him feel more potent and distressing.  Tony sighed and stood at the door, watching as Steve drained the water bottle.  “Well, tell me if that changes, okay?”

“I will, but it won’t.  I’m fine.”

Tony hoped so.

The silence returned, an entirely unwelcomed variable in this equation.  Tony found himself pacing, keeping part of his attention on the communication channels, part of it on Steve’s vitals, and part of it on Steve himself.  All those things were just frustrating.  No call from Bruce, no change in Steve’s vitals one way or the other, and no hint from Steve if he was experiencing anything out of the ordinary.  Of course, that could be because there _wasn’t_ anything out of the ordinary.  Maybe this really was all much ado about nothing.

But then Bruce finally contacted them.  Tony practically jumped in surprise when the notification blinked across Iron Man’s HUD.  JARVIS immediately displayed the call on one of the large monitors on the side of the room.  Steve sat up with a wince as Bruce’s face appeared there.  It was about lunch time in India, so the bright sunshine was streaming through windows behind Bruce.  He was sitting at a desk in what looked like an office.  Tony supposed it was a clinic.  That was what he’d gone to India to do, help the area doctors set up new medical facilities.  Tony hadn’t seen Bruce in a few weeks.  He’d cut his hair short, trading in the curly mop for a more neatly shorn look.  He’d also grown a beard.  He was sweating up a storm, face glistening with perspiration as he leaned forward closer to the screen.  “Do I want to know what the hell’s going on there?”

“Bruce!  Bruce, Bruce, Bruce,” Tony said, offering up a dazzling smile.  Bruce could see him thanks to the HUD.  “How’s the other side of the world treating you?”

Bruce didn’t look pleased, though not so much with the interruption as with the reason behind it.  “What gives, Tony?  What’s all this stuff you sent me?  I’m not exactly this kind of doctor, you know.”

Tony grimaced, glancing at Steve, but Steve was just sitting on the bed, looking a little dazed and confused.  “I know!  I know.  But you’re, uh, the best I have right now?  Because I, um…  Well…  I might have maybe could have possibly exposed Cap to some sort of alien pathogen?  Maybe?”

“You did _what?_ ”

“Look, it was an accident, okay?  Did you get the memo on our latest and greatest thwarted alien invasion?”

Bruce was none too pleased with Tony’s antics.  “No.”

“Long story short, there was a big alien mech thing pooping little metal eggs all over Chicago.  It was weird, and I was curious, and I was screwing around with the egg-thing when I shouldn’t have been and it kinda sorta blew up.  In Steve’s face.  Slime everywhere.  In his mouth and nose and everything.  It was kinda funny at the time.”  Steve positively glowered, and Bruce looked on Tony in admonishment.  Tony tried for an embarrassed, disarming smile, but he felt like the world’s biggest asshole all over again.  “So yeah.”

“Jesus, Tony,” Bruce said, shaking his head disapprovingly.

“It’s alright, Doctor Banner,” Steve said.  All the sudden he was hopping down from the bed.  He seemed to handle that just fine this time, though Tony could have sworn he saw his knees wobble again.  Tony moved forward from the door to help, but Steve glared at him and that stopped him in his tracks.  “I’m okay.  No harm done.”

“No, harm done,” Bruce corrected.  He was looking at a tablet, his agile fingers quickly scrolling through the data.  “Very much harm done.”

Steve went white.  Tony did, too.  He could literally feel the blood drain from his face, and his heart started pounding all over again.  “What do you mean?” he asked in a small voice.

“Your blood chemistry’s way off,” Bruce reported.

Tony didn’t know what to say.  He’d known from the second he’d woken up to Steve unconscious that there was a very real possibility that Steve could be sick, that that slime could have done something to him.  Actually hearing it though?  “God,” he whispered.  “How far off?”

“Enough that it’s a concern,” Bruce said.  “From what I can see here, whatever you were exposed to _looks_ like a neurotoxin of some sort.  Not being there, it’s going to be hard for me to be sure.  The substance in your blood seems similar to, well… tetanus?  That’d be my closest guess.  But it’s not just that.  There are metabolites here that I can’t identify.  JARVIS can’t, either.”

 _Metabolites._   “You mean his body’s breaking this thing down,” Tony surmised, unable to hold in his hope.

Bruce sighed.  “From what I can tell, yes.  But I can’t be sure.  More tests would be nice.  Your other scans look fine, which is good, but I need more data.”

“Not necessary,” Steve said.  “I can’t get sick.  I haven’t _been_ sick since 1943.”  He announced that like there was some mathematical weight to those seventy or so years.  There wasn’t.  Most of that time he’d spent in the ice.  In actuality, Steve had only been in this serum-enhanced body for something like three years.  Maybe.  “It’s fine.”

“It’s _not_ fine,” Tony said sharply.

“Steve, if this was something from earth, I’d agree with you whole-heartedly,” Bruce said.  He had that pained tone he often used when he needed to break bad news to someone.  Of course, usually it was along the lines of _Tony, your experiment failed_ or _I accidentally took out half of a city block.  Sorry._   It wasn’t _you’ve been exposed to an alien toxin and I don’t know what to say._  “But we’re dealing with a complete unknown here, and how the serum will handle it is an unknown on top of it.  Is your body metabolizing whatever this is?  Sure, it seems that way.  Does that mean you’re not going to get sick from it?  Doubt it, since JARVIS told me you passed out once already and you look like you’re shaking like a leaf, which I can see even from here by the way.”

Steve scowled.  It was really true.  He was trembling.  “How bad is it going to get?”

Bruce seemed exasperated.  “Guys, am I speaking a different language here?  _I can’t tell._   All I have is the blood test results, a bunch of scans that show nothing, your vitals, and the composition of the original slime to go off of.  I really have no idea what this is!  As I said, there are molecules involved here that I can’t identify.  But if it’s like any other neurotoxin, you could be in for a really rough ride.  They can cause all sorts of nasty symptoms.”

Steve sighed.  He was keeping his expression utterly impassive.  Never let it be sad that Captain America wasn’t brave and crazy in equal measures.  He had to be to be facing the fact that he was ill with something no one had ever studied before (which, thus, meant there was no cure) with not so much as a glimmer of panic in his steely gaze.  “Like?”

Bruce sighed.  “Muscles spasms, rigidity, or paralysis, depending on which neurotransmitters and receptors this thing screws with.  Hallucinations.  Psychosis.  Pain.  Difficulties swallowing.  Excessive sweating.  Nausea.  The list goes on and on.  This thing can and probably is wreaking havoc on your central nervous system.  I’d say almost anything is possible.  Or nothing.  I can’t begin to guess.”

That all sounded fairly bad.  “But will it kill me?”  Steve’s tone was infuriatingly calm.

“I – I…”  Bruce shook his head, sighing again.  “I don’t _think_ so.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Tony mumbled.  Not that it was his relief to have, since this was pretty assuredly his fault.  “What can we do to make sure it doesn’t?”

“Other than keeping an eye on things, I don’t know,” Bruce replied.  He sounded dismayed.  “I can start looking into some sort of cure from here, or I can come back–”

“No,” Steve said firmly.  He glanced between Tony and Bruce.  “That’s really not necessary.  Look, I feel a little… off.  Little shaky.  But I think I’d know if I was dying or something.  As long as no one else can get sick–”

“It’s not contagious that I can see.  This isn’t some sort of alien bacteria or virus or fungus or something.  At least, I don’t think it is.  It _looks_ like a neurotoxin,” Bruce said again, like he was reaffirming that to himself.  “And neurotoxins don’t spread.  Once it’s in your system, you either work through it, hopefully with treatment if there’s some available, or it does its damage.  There’s no real risk of exposure to anyone else, assuming you cleaned the mess up properly.”

That was said at Tony, and it was most of the way toward being an accusation.  “Yeah.  Yeah, it’s fine now.”

“Then it’s probably alright for other people to have contact.”  At least that was something good, although Tony felt like a rat bastard for considering his own safety.  Of course, that got worse.  “You’re damn lucky this thing didn’t blast _you_ in the face, Tony.”

“Yeah, yeah.  I know.”  Christ, he didn’t need his nose rubbed in it.  “So now what?”

Bruce clenched his jaw.  “You should check yourself out.  JARVIS can show you what to look for.”

Tony couldn’t contain his irritation, more with the situation and his culpability than anything else.  “Okay.  Whatever.”

Bruce read that wrong.  “I can fly back tomorrow.  I’m really needed here right now to deal with the measles outbreak, but they have things set up so once they’re up and running–”

Steve’s eyes flashed.  “No.  I’m fine, okay?”  He let go of the bed, lifting his arms perpendicular to his chest with his palms out like this was some sort of demonstration as to how fit he was.  He still shook with a minute tremor, but he didn’t fall over at least.  “Alright?  I’m fine.  So I have a rough night ahead of me.”

“More than that.”  Bruce was studying the tablet again.  “You were exposed about eight hours ago?”

“Something like that,” Tony grumbled.

“Given that and the concentrations of the toxin in your blood and what I think are the metabolites…  Yeah, twenty-four to forty-eight hours?  Give or take?”

“Fine,” Steve said shortly, “so a rough day or two then.  I can handle it.”

“Cap, you should not be alone.  It’s entirely possible your body will work through this just fine, no serious symptoms or problems, and the serum’ll flush the toxin out and you’ll be none the worse for the wear.  But it’s possible the _opposite_ will be true, too.  I don’t think this will kill you or do any permanent damage with the way the serum’s already working on neutralizing it, but I can’t be sure.  You _should not be_ off on your own while the poison’s in your body.  Absolutely not.”

“Doctor Banner–”

“Go to SHIELD,” he advised.  “If you don’t want me to come back, go there.  They’ll keep an eye on you.  They have doctors trained to deal with biological unknowns like these, and they can work on a cure, too, and maybe learn something about–”

“ _No._ ”  That came out so hard, so emphatic, almost panicked when Tony really thought about it.  Steve took a deep breath like he was trying to calm himself.  He did, at least enough to don his stoic mask of polite detachment again.  “No, I really am fine.  I don’t need that.  I can deal with being sick if that’s what it comes to.  I’ve lived through my more than my fair share of it.  And, yeah, it’s been a while, but I can deal with it.”

Bruce frowned.  “You really shouldn’t–”

“Thanks, Doctor Banner.  Stark.”  And with that, Steve just _walked_ out of the infirmary.  The doors swished shut behind him, and Tony watched, completely flummoxed and surprised as hell, as Steve headed down the corridor to the elevator.

It was quiet for a moment.  The two scientists seemed confused beyond words.  Then Tony shook his head.  “What’s up with that?”

“Tony.”  Bruce’s call pulled his attention back to the video.  His friend looked nothing but worried.  “You can’t let him tough this out alone.”

Tony sighed.  He disengaged Iron Man, the armor opening to allow his exit.  Stepping out, he felt weird and exhausted and a little weightless.  “What do you want me to do, Bruce?  Tie him up and take him over to SHIELD?  He’s Captain America.  And he’s a big boy.  If he wants to suck it up and suffer through it, we should let him.”  Yeah, that was a geyser of selfish, self-serving bullshit.  Tony was just scared shitless of where he knew this was going.  There was only one way it _could_ go.  Well, two he supposed.

And Bruce was intent on reminding him of his options (duties, in other words).  “Either convince him to go, or you have to stay with him.”  Tony closed his eyes.  God, that was going to be painful.  Not that he didn’t want to help, because he did.  He’d do whatever he had to, whatever it took to make this right.  But both of those routes required a level of trust and understanding he knew he didn’t share with Steve.  Bruce picked up on that immediately.  “He _can’t_ be alone.  I’m not kidding.  We really have no idea how this toxin is going to affect him.  Odds are he’s going to be fine, but you shouldn’t bank on that.  Some neurotoxins are deadly.  You know that.”

“I do know that.”

“Like I said, the fact that he got hit and not you is nothing short of blessing.  If your roles were reversed, I’d insist he take you to a hospital.”  The fact that Steve took the hit for him was a _huge_ part of why he felt like such an asshole.  “But if your roles really were reversed, you’d probably be dead.”

“I know.”

“These types of toxins can paralyze the diaphragm and cause asphyxiation.  They can cause cardiac complications.  They can cause permanent blindness and deafness and nerve damage and all kinds of issues.  I mean, this can’t be ignored just because the serum _should_ protect him.”

“I know!”

“Where are Barton and Romanoff?”

“Indisposed,” Tony grumbled.  He leaned into the vacant hospital bed, sinking deep into submission.  This situation sucked.  “They’re on some SHIELD mission.  No way to get in contact with them.”

“Thor?”

“Asgard.” 

“I can come tomorrow.  If I leave now…  I guess maybe I could, but it’d be difficult for them here.  Really difficult.  They don’t have doctors on hand to deal adequately with the situation.”  Tony huffed a bitter laugh at the irony.  “Just tell me: do you want me to come home today?”

Tony paused to think about that.  He knew the answer in his heart, but his brain was behind.  His brain made him consider it, of course, made him focus on the fact that Bruce was essentially offering to swoop in and save him from either a very uncomfortable and difficult conversation or a very uncomfortable and difficult couple of days.  Bruce was offering to bail him out of this situation.  Granted, he’d probably be endangering the lives of countless innocents over in India, sick people who needed Bruce’s help.  And, granted, it’d take some time for Bruce to get here.  The quinjet could go well above Mach Two, and it was about 12,000 kilometers between here and India, and if the jet flew at 2,500 kilometers/hour, it’d be about five hours there, five hours back…  _No._   He exhaled slowly.  He’d caused this mess.  He’d been the one to flippantly open an alien pod in his workshop with no safeguards.  He’d been the one to coerce Steve into participating.  He was the one Steve had been protecting, the reason Steve got blasted with the slime.  This was _his_ problem, and he needed to fix it.

Even if that meant dealing with a sick, irrational, intransigent Captain America.

This sucked.  Tony closed his eyes.  “No.  No, I can take care of this.”  _Take care of him.  God._ “Just… tell me what I need to do.”

* * *

Bruce explained it all to him.  What the dangers were (at least, the ones he could predict).  How to test Steve’s blood to ensure the serum was metabolizing the neurotoxin.  How to test himself.  Bruce recommended he move some of the equipment from the infirmary and his lab up to wherever Steve went down (assuming he did at some point) so that it was handy and convenient.  Tony was mostly paying attention, but part of him was already devising a way to repurpose the scanner he’d used to monitor his palladium poisoning to measure the neurotoxicity levels of Steve’s blood so they could streamline everything, and part of him had frankly checked out.  He was absolutely terrified of what he’d signed himself up for.  He and Steve went together about as well as oil and water, and now it was his responsibility either to coax Steve into going into SHIELD (which seemed about as insurmountable as climbing Mount Everest without his armor) or to make sure Steve survived the next however long it took for his body to flush out the alien contaminant.  Tony had no idea how to take care of a sick person.  Well, he knew in theory.  Keep the patient company.  Provide comfort and solace as much as possible.  Try to relieve the symptoms.  A palliative approach, basically.  He couldn’t picture himself doing any of that.  Being a source of support while someone else suffered…  That really wasn’t his cup of tea.  Or his forte.

So as JARVIS and Bruce worked together to calculate how quickly the serum might be metabolizing the neurotoxin and he set to work building his meter, he couldn’t help but sink into dread.  JARVIS was keeping an eye on Steve.  The soldier had gone right to his floor.  The AI didn’t have a read on his vitals of course (at least nothing beyond the fact that he was still alive – holy hell, how’d it come to the point where they were actually worried about that?), but the AI could tell Steve was laying in his bed.  Tony supposed that was good enough.  It was late, and he was tired, and there was likely a long, miserable ordeal ahead of him, one way or another.  He sighed as he finished up his work.  “I need some coffee,” he moaned.

“Tony, are you sure you can handle this?”  Bruce had been watching fairly continuously over the video call.  The computer monitor at Tony’s workbench was displaying the video call.  Tony was doing all this work in one of his other workshops, a little afraid (and probably rightly so) of going back to the one where he’d screwed around with the egg.  That and it felt just a bit like he was a criminal returning to the scene of the crime.  “You’re… surprisingly quiet.”

“What do you want me to say, Bruce?”  Tony sighed heavily and shoved the little device he’d just finished away.  All he’d have to do is prick Steve’s finger, rub some blood droplets into the sensor, and the meter would detect the concentration of the poison’s metabolites versus the concentration of the poison itself.  Simple.  One little number to indicate how close he was to having this nightmare behind him.

“That you’re prepared to deal with this,” Bruce said simply.  “Rogers…  Well, maybe you haven’t noticed because you seem to suffer from the same problem, but he’s not exactly great at taking care of himself.  That I have seen, anyway.”

“Not sure I appreciate the implication,” Tony said lowly, slamming shut his tool case.  “And I have noticed.”

“I think because the serum makes him so resilient he feels like he doesn’t have to.  I’ve never known him to actually get treatment after a battle, and we’ve all watched him take some serious hits.”  Well, at least Tony wasn’t the only one who’d observed that particular behavior.  Right after the Battle of New York when Steve was shot with the Chitauri blaster, he noticed.  He’d noticed and he’d been half out of his mind with euphoria and his own wounds and that little near-death experience he’d had.  Bruce (and everyone else) would probably be surprised at just how much Tony _did_ notice about Steve.  Because Tony cared, cared so much, and no one freaking _knew._

Bruce sighed.  “I think he’s okay staying in the Tower and waiting this out, but you have to be with him.  There’s no one else there, so it’s a huge responsibility.”  Bruce didn’t go so far as to say the obvious.  Tony didn’t do well with responsibility.  “And…  Well, he’s going to need more than someone checking his blood every couple hours and making sure he doesn’t get sicker.  He may need a friend.”

Tony swallowed through a dry throat, all this unrequited longing in his chest suddenly pushing up in a consuming wave.  “I don’t know if I can be that,” he mumbled, trying not to acknowledge the pain.

“You can,” Bruce insisted.  “Just don’t be a dick.”  Tony glowered at him, and Bruce smiled, teasing far more than chastising.  “Look, Tony, you two fight, get under each other’s skin, rub each other wrong…  Whatever.  That’s what you do.  But he doesn’t have anyone else.  This doesn’t have to be the prelude to a beautiful relationship.  It just needs to be you making sure he’s okay and that he knows he’s not alone.  Steve hides more than just his physical hurts.”

“Christ.  Since when you are that kind of doctor?” Tony muttered.

“Since I got dragged into this mess,” Bruce said.  He smiled disarmingly.  “I’m not trying to pick a fight here or insult you.”

“Well, you could have fooled me.  I feel shitty enough about this as it is!”  The room went quiet.  Tony bit the inside of his lower lip, trying to control his emotions.  He was so tired and upset about this that it was damn hard, but he managed, drawing a deep breath and closing his eyes for a second.  “It’s fine.  I can handle this.  I can handle him.  I don’t need you to come back.  Just… stay close to your phone.  In case I have questions.  Or need moral support.  Or if Cap starts, you know, dying.”

Bruce’s smile slipped.  “I’ll rearrange my plans so that I can leave tomorrow,” he promised again, “just as soon as I am sure they’re okay on their own here.”

“Tomorrow’s fine.  If your projections are right, all the fun will be over before you get here.”  Tony quirked a tired smile.  “Way to go, Banner.”

“Just… hang in there.  I’ll be back there as soon as I can.”

With that, Bruce ended the call, and Tony’s monitor switched to the Avengers logo.  The Avengers logo that he’d just designed a couple months back, because this initiative, this response team, this crazy and incredible group of people, had just come together.  They _all_ hardly knew each other.  Fledgling friendships and newborn relationships, but there were _boundaries_.  And what he needed to do for Steve now…  It pushed those boundaries in a huge way.

Tony grunted.  “Don’t spose I can just hang out here and, you know, wait for him to ring for help or something…  Can I?”

JARVIS didn’t respond, which was an answer in and of itself.  Tony leaned back from his workbench.  “Yeah, didn’t think so.”  The workshop was utterly silent.  The hum of the Tower’s air recyclers and the low-level whir of the computers and tools around him felt deafening.  Tony sat there, not thinking and feeling pretty weary and defeated, for what felt like forever.  In reality, it was just a few minutes before he scrounged up the energy to stand.  His sore back and neck panged, and he grimaced.  “Alright, let’s go play nursemaid to Captain America.”  That sounded wrong on so many levels, like wrong, wrong, _wrong,_ and Tony grimaced.  He grabbed his scanner and a couple tablets loaded with Bruce’s instructions and information.  Then off he went.

The elevator took him up to Steve’s floor.  Each of the Avengers had his or her own, which was admittedly way too much space for one person, but Tony had it to spare and he was generous like that.  He strolled down the darkened exterior hallways, past the empty kitchen and living areas and guestrooms, to the double doors of Steve’s private suite, which were closed and locked.  Tony tried the handles anyway.  “Steve?” he called.  He knocked.  “Steve?”  There was no answer.  Another heavy, long breath blew out of Tony’s mouth.  “J?”

“Captain Rogers is in the bathroom.”

“Oh.  I guess I can come back then?”

“He is ill.”

 _Ugh.  God._ “Uh…”

“I believe you should go in there, sir.  He is rather unsteady on his feet.  Also, I can only hazard a guess, but I surmise that being by oneself while sick is quite a miserable experience.”

Tony didn’t need JARVIS being his conscience.  He knew that very well from his young adult years.  After his parents had died, he’d been utterly alone.  Every cold, every flu, every stomach bug…  He’d had to weather that without help, without his mother’s hands in his hair or Edwin Jarvis’ teas or even his father’s occasional fond word.  Obie had been a somewhat decent father-figure, he supposed, until he turned into a lying, traitorous rat-bastard.  But he hadn’t been eager to help Tony whenever he’d been sick.  At any rate, Steve really did have absolutely _no one._   Tony tipped his head back, wrestling with his guilt and his care for Steve and his inherent dislike of this sort of crap.  “Alright, get me in there.”

JARVIS overrode the door locks, and Tony turned the knob and went inside.  It was dark, but the shadows didn’t hide the fact that nothing had been changed from when he’d had the interior designers come in and decorate during the Tower’s construction.  It was the same furniture, the same sleek, modern décor.  A blank canvas.  When Tony had offered up the space to the team, he had told each of them to feel free to redecorate, that they could make their abode their own.  He’d even pay for it, too.  Steve clearly hadn’t taken him up of his offer.  There was no sign he was living there, no indication of his own tastes or preferences.  That was upsetting.  Of course, Tony really had no idea if Barton or Romanoff or Thor had redecorated, either.  Bruce had, more or less, but Bruce was around more than any of them.  And so was Steve.  Steve didn’t have anywhere else to go, except some sad, empty apartment in Brooklyn furnished by the assholes at SHIELD in some stupid attempt to “ease his transition”.  Tony thought Fury was maybe trying to convince Steve to join SHIELD and relocate to DC, and seeing that Steve had not done anything to make the Tower his home…  That was more than upsetting.  It was scary because it meant Steve had no roots here and could up and go whenever he felt like it.

Tony headed through the private living room and down the hallway.  The door to the bedroom was wide open, and the huge, California king with its expensive gray sheets and duvet was unmade.  Tony stepped inside.  Steve’s shield was on one of the plush chairs in the seating area, shiny and clean of the orange slime.  Tony still winced seeing it, imagining Steve buffing it alone in here, and not just after the incident in the workshop.  After _every_ fight, him sitting here in the dark with his shield, the only thing he had from his life before the ice.  _Jesus._   “Steve?”

There was no answer.  The light was on in the huge bathroom, but the door was shut so the illumination was bleeding out through the crack at the bottom.  Tony took a deep breath, asked JARVIS to turn the lights on in the bedroom to something a little brighter than depressed dimness, and headed over there.  This was going to suck.  Seriously suck.  He made himself stop hesitating and rapped his knuckles on the door.  “Cap?”

Still no response.  Tony chewed his lower lip hard.  Steve needed to let him in, both literally and figuratively, because unless he got some validation here, he was going to lose his nerve.  He stood still and listened intently.  It was dumb and childish, but he got frustrated after a few silent seconds and actually pressed his ear to the door.  “Rogers?  You in there?”  Utter silence.  “JARVIS, is he in there?”

“Yes, sir.”

There was a low groan.  Steve’s voice was hoarse and strained and very, _very_ unhappy.  “Go away, Stark.”

The relief blasting through Tony overwhelmed him.  He hid it like he usually hid things: with being an asshole.  “Oh, good, you’re not dead.  Excellent, really, since I promised Banner that you’d still be alive when he gets here.  Plus the whole ‘killing Captain America’ thing seems like it’s pretty bad.”

None of that was appreciated.  “Go away.”

Tony leaned into the door with yet another heavy breath.  “Come on, Steve.  Let me in.  I need to test your blood, see how the serum’s doing with this whole neurotoxin fiasco.”

“No.  Don’t need it.”

 _Oh, for God’s sake…_   “You very much _do_ need it.  I need to make sure you’re alright.  I’m…  I’m babysitting you.”  Tony rolled his eyes.  That sounded so awful for both of them.  “For the next however long I need to.  So open up.”

“Go ’way.”

“Steve, this is ridiculous.  You’re acting like a two-year old.”

“Considering _you’re_ the one who got me into this situation, I think I can act however I damn well please!” came the muffled retort.  Tony winced.  He deserved that, he did, but it still sliced.  The silence that followed was rife with some serious tension, and Tony thought more and more that maybe he should just do what Steve wanted and let him be.  Let him deal with this on his own.  He was Captain America, so he could take care of himself.  There was no doubt in Tony’s mind about that.  Plus he clearly _wanted_ to be left alone, so who was Tony to deny him that?

But then there was some shuffling behind the door, some gasping, and a thud against the wall.  It sounded like Steve was fumbling at the knob, struggling with the lock.  The door opened a couple inches.  Tony backed up a little, his frown growing into a full-fledged wince.  Steve looked much worse than he had an hour ago.  He was pale and shaking and his eyes looked all wrong.  “Sorry,” he whispered.  “That was mean.”

“Not like I don’t have it coming,” Tony said.  He grimaced more, looking up and down Steve’s tall form.  He hadn’t changed out of his jeans and t-shirt from earlier, and they were rumpled and sweaty.  Steve’s hair was all over the place, too.  Tony had never seen him so disheveled.  “You okay?”

Steve stared at him a second, eyes glazed like he didn’t understand.  Tony watched in horror as the dawning realization settled in them, as Steve went absolutely _green_.  He ripped around and staggered across the bathroom toward the toilet with a ragged gasp and then…  Yeah, there went dinner.  Tony ripped away, unable to watch, fearing he’d never be able to eat Thai food again.  Listening to Steve throw up was bad enough.  “Oh, God,” he groaned.  “Yeah…  Yeah, that’s bad.”  After a bit, when it sounded like the worst of it was over, he chanced a glance.  Steve was still hunched over the toilet, drenched in sweat and shaking like mad.  “How about a courtesy flush on that?”

Steve gasped.  “Go away,” he moaned again, but he did reach up and pull the handle on the toilet.

Tony stared at the doorframe, leaning into it.  “I can’t.”

Steve’s labored breathing seemed ridiculously loud in the spacious bathroom.  He wasn’t moving, clinging on the bowl for dear life.  “Maybe I don’t – don’t want you to see this,” he gritted out.  “You think about that?  Maybe I don’t want you to see me like this!”

No, Tony hadn’t really thought about it that way, though now that he did it made perfect sense.  Lord, if their roles were reversed, he wouldn’t want Steve or anyone else (but especially Steve) seeing him puke his guts up like this.  It would be humiliating, degrading particularly with all the posturing he did around Steve, to have him witness a moment of weakness this bad.  But, on the flip side, it hurt that Steve didn’t trust him.  “I’ll, uh, wait out here for you.  Give you some privacy.  Okay?”

Steve didn’t answer because he was at it again, his stomach seemingly intent on inverting itself.  Tony grimaced his way back into the bedroom and closed the door softly behind him.  He could hear Steve deep in the throes of it, and it sounded completely awful.  He started pacing.  Waiting was even more torturous with Steve sounding like he was being flayed from the inside out on the other side of the door.  So he moved and tried not to be idle, dressing Steve’s bed just to keep busy.

It seemed to take forever, but the miserable retching sounds finally quieted, and Tony chanced stopping and listening anew.  “Steve?” he called after a few moments.  There was no answer again.  Tony knocked on the bathroom door.  “Cap?  How’re you doing in there?”  Still nothing.  Tony was getting frustrated and worried.  He grasped the knob.  “I’m coming in.”

His declaration was unsurprisingly met with more silence, so Tony steeled himself and opened the door again.  At first all he saw were Steve’s legs, the denim of his jeans starkly blue against the bright, white tile.  Tony came inside further and realized Steve was collapsed on his side, curled around the toilet, shivering with his arms wrapped almost protectively around himself.  “Steve?”

Steve groaned miserably.  “I feel awful.”

“Yeah…”  Tony tentatively came closer, sympathy and concern bolstering his bravery.  “You don’t look great.”  He squatted beside Steve, reaching out a hand to grasp his arm.  Hesitation had him pulling right back, which was all kinds of stupid considering Steve had basically been asleep on his chest not more than a couple hours ago.  Tony resolved to touch him; that was the point of all this, wasn’t it?  To provide some comfort, a reminder to Steve that he wasn’t going through this alone?  Steve didn’t recoil from his hand when he finally did lay it on his bicep, so that was encouraging.  He started to rub gently.  Steve’s breathing eased just a bit.  He stopped swallowing so hard, closing his eyes.  “You think you can stand?” Tony asked.

“Dizzy,” Steve whispered.  He licked his lips.  “Really dizzy.”

“Okay,” Tony comforted.  “Okay.  No rush.”  He gave him a little more time to settle down, and in the meantime, he pulled his little scanner from his pocket and took Steve’s hand from where it was limp on the tiles.  “I’m just going to run this blood test, okay?  It’ll sting a little.”  Steve grunted as Tony pricked his finger and smeared the resulting drop of blood on the sensor.  The tiny computer ran its analysis and then chirped.  _86%.  Goddamn it._ That wasn’t much better than it had been before when Tony ran the first round of blood tests.  Then again, Bruce said it could be hours until the serum got ahead of the neurotoxin.  “You’re swimming in this crap, Cap.”

Steve grunted again.   He seemed to be fading fast, falling asleep right on the bathroom floor.  Tony shook his head.  “We need to get you back to bed.”

“Here’s good,” Steve mumbled.

“Yeah, not really.  I can help you, but I can’t carry you, so you have to at least try to get yourself up.”  Steve groaned as Tony patted his knee.  “Come on.  You can’t sleep here.  Take it from someone who’s passed out on one too many bathroom floors.  You’ll wake up feeling like shit.”

“Already feel like shit,” Steve said, and there it was with the swearing again.  Still, he obeyed more or less, letting Tony tug and carefully pull him to his knees.

That, apparently, was a serious mistake.  “Whoa, whoa!”  Tony’s grip on Steve’s arm was the only thing that stopped him from whacking his head into the toilet bowl as he pitched forward.  Apparently the vertigo was more than he could handle.  Tony’s heart was pounding with the close call, so much so that he forgot to be disgusted as Steve gripped the porcelain and threw up again.  Quickly he averted his eyes.  “Okay, my bad on that one.  My bad on everything, actually.”

Steve was too busy dry heaving to say anything.  Nothing much was coming up anymore, but it still sounded awful.  Tony had his hands on Steve’s back and shoulders, steadying him, and he could feel the muscles of Steve’s chest and abdomen twisting as they were wracked with misery.  He rubbed what he hoped were soothing circles.  “Yeah, just get it all out.  It’s okay.  Not even going to blame you for permanently ruining my appetite for Thai food.  Don’t think I’ll ever be able to even look at pad thai again.  Seems like a fitting punishment, I guess.  You know, for getting you sick.  When I suggested we hang out before, I did kinda think it’d be a good chance to get to know you better, but this is _way_ beyond–”

“Stark,” Steve said around a mangled moan, “shut up!”

Tony flushed and stopped babbling.  “Right.  Shutting up.”

The bathroom went mostly quiet aside from breathing and gasping.  Steve worked his way through his nausea, remaining fairly well trapped where he was.  Tony sat beside him, trying not to look, trying harder not to talk, trying even harder still to continue to rub Steve’s back in something that could be construed as comforting.  Eventually, Steve’s muscles relaxed and his breathing evened out a bit.  As he let go of the toilet and leaned back, Tony saw he’d gripped the bowl hard enough to crack the rim.  _Yikes._   “Doing better?” he asked quietly.  He handed Steve a towel.

Steve was shaking, but he took it and managed to wipe his face.  “Little.”

“Feel like we can get you back to bed?”

Steve swallowed, tipping his head back.  He just knelt there, clearly trying to compose himself.  Then he nodded, a reflexive jerk of his head like he was committing to the idea out of necessity rather than being certain about it.

Tony moved fast.  He hooked an arm around Steve’s waist and got Steve’s arm over his own shoulders.  He stood, lifting Steve with him.  Steve groaned weakly, wavering like he was going to go back down.  Or like he was going to…  “Please don’t puke on me,” Tony gasped, guiding Steve out of the bathroom.

“Would rather not!” Steve gasped.

It was probably a miracle they made it to the bed.  Tony pushed Steve to the side of it.  “Can you stand here a sec?”  Steve clenched his jaw but nodded, leaning heavily into the mattress with one hand braced on the headboard.  Tony stayed there until he was pretty sure Steve was steady before taking off in sprint for Steve’s walk-in closet.  “Holy pile of plaid, Batman,” he muttered at the array of old-timey button downs and dress shirts.  Apparently his assumption earlier that Steve had updated his wardrobe was rather premature.  “JARVIS, make a note to take Rogers shopping when this is over.”

“Yes, sir.”

He picked through the clothes.  There wasn’t exactly a huge pile of them, so it didn’t take long for Tony to find the neatly folded pile of pajama pants and a drawer full of undershirts.  Snatching some (including a couple extra sets in case), he went back to the bedroom to find Steve standing where he’d left him.  He trembled, biting his lower lip hard, eyes clenched shut.  Tony tried not to let his guilt get the better of him because this could get awkward fast.  “Let’s, um…  You want to get yourself changed?”  Steve cracked open hazy, pain-filled eyes, and that about answered Tony’s question.  “Alright,” Tony acquiesced, wondering how the hell he was going to get Steve undressed without _touching_ him.

“I can just wear this,” Steve ground out.

“If you want, but you’d feel better in something more comfortable.  And you’re all sweaty.”

“I’m fine.”

Tony tried to hang onto his patience.  “You’re already standing.  You really want to have to get up to get changed later?”  Steve glared at Tony, honest to God _glared._   Tony huffed.  “You know what?  So far?  For spending your entire childhood sick, you’re a lousy patient.”

“It ever occur to you that maybe that’s _why_ I’m a lousy patient?  You don’t need to take care of me!”  Steve let go of the bed and made a grab for clothes Tony was offering, but he immediately tipped and almost went down.  “I’m…  I’m okay.”  Tony helped him regain his balance.  “I’m okay.”

“Steve.”  Tony swallowed thickly.  “Let me take you to SHIELD.”

Steve shook his head, gathering himself.  His hands were shaking to the point where he still couldn’t really take the clothes.  “No,” he said.  “No, it’s okay.  I’m–”

“Okay,” Tony snapped wearily.  “Yeah, got it.  Come on.  Let me help you.”

They got to it.  Tony decided to do his pants first, crouching next to Steve and eyeing his trim hips.  _Yeah._   He was mad enough at Steve and at himself and at this whole screwed up situation that he was able to stuff his nerves ( _nerves._   Since when did Tony Stark have nerves about undressing someone else?) and lift up Steve’s shirt to get to the button and zipper of his jeans.  Steve wasn’t wearing a belt, which meant less work, so that was good, but it also meant his jeans were hanging low, and Tony…  Well, he couldn’t help but look.  This was extremely inappropriate (like the mother of all inappropriate times) for him to be thinking about _this_ , but here they were.  God, this was something he’d wanted.  He knew that in the back of his mind where he was actually honest with himself.  It was something he’d thought about, fantasized about, dreamt about.

He just didn’t quite picture _this’d_ be how it happened.

“Tony…”  Steve whimpered.  “Please.”

That startled Tony out of his appraisal of Steve’s perfect waist and muscular stomach and everything else, and for a second he almost thought this _was_ that forbidden dream of his, that Steve was begging him to undress him and get on with it.  But it wasn’t.  Steve licked his lips, still looking really green about the gills.  “Really dizzy again,” he admitted in a meek voice.

“Right.  Sorry.”  Tony fumbled to get Steve’s jeans undone, praying the low light of the bedroom (and the fact Steve seemed pretty consumed with his situation) hid how madly he was blushing.  Tony Stark _didn’t_ blush, either, but there this was, too.  Crazy.  And he was really, _really_ praying Steve didn’t notice his hands shaking or how his pants had become just a little too tight, uncomfortably so.  Yeah, God, he was a horrible man.  Absolutely.  A one hundred and ten percent, certifiable, top-of-the-line asshole.

Contrary to popular opinion, though, he did have a modicum of self-restraint.  He worked Steve’s jeans down over his hips and thighs, making himself remember that Steve was really sick and this was all his fault and if he never saw or _smelled_ pad thai again, it’d be too soon.  Once he had the pants off, he didn’t pause (at all) to look at Steve’s thighs (or the fact that he was wearing gray boxer briefs that pretty much left nothing to the imagination), instead getting the pajama pants on him and tugging them up his legs and into place.  He took a deep breath.  “Alright,” he said more to himself than to Steve.  He could feel Steve staring at him, and that was pretty much more than he could bear.  “Alright?”

“Yeah,” Steve murmured.  “Yeah.”

“Okay.”  He stripped Steve’s damp t-shirt off with a jerk, making a show of being methodical and efficient and doing everything in his power _not_ to ogle Steve’s naked chest, which was probably as glorious as the rest of him.  _Get it done, Stark._   He wasn’t looking.  Nope.  Not even a glance.  He just tugged the clean shirt over Steve’s head and helped him get his arms through the sleeves.  Steve was shaking hard, and his gross motor skills seemed to have taken a nosedive.  Tony kept him upright as he pulled back the sheets and covers.  Then he helped him into bed.

Steve went, completely limp and pliant under Tony’s hands.  Tony raised his eyebrows in surprise as he tucked the other man in.  “You okay?”  His only response was a quiet groan.  Steve’s eyes were already closed.  He was dropping off into sleep fast.  Tony let him go.  “This is bad.”  He pulled the covers tighter around Steve’s body and stared at his tense face.  “Really bad.”

“Sir.”

“What?”

“I suggest you sleep while he does.  There’s no indication he will remain peaceful for long, and it is extremely late.  You may have many difficult hours ahead of you.”

Tony closed his eyes, too.  They were aching, like his body was suddenly remembering it was well past three in the morning and he was exhausted.  Maybe JARVIS was right.  Maybe sleeping would be a good idea.  Before he did, though, he fished Steve’s hand out from under the duvet and grabbed his makeshift meter again.  He pricked Steve’s finger and measured his blood.  _87%._   That’d be one point in _the wrong_ direction.  Of course there was error involved in that, both in instrument precision and concerning statistical likelihood, but that was freaking frustrating.

“Sir, this will take time.  Check again in two or three hours.”

“I know,” Tony said with a sigh.  “Watched pot, right?”

“Yes.”

“Guess I’ll just…”  Tony looked around.  He got up with a grimace and grabbed one of the plush chairs from the seating area.  Dragging it to the bedside almost seemed like too much work, but he did it.  Then he plunked down into it.  “Keep an eye on things, huh, J?”

“Of course, sir.”

He was partway through thinking that spending the rest of the night in the chair wouldn’t be too comfortable when he fell asleep.

* * *

Sleep was overrated.  Clearly.

“Sir?  Sir!”

Tony cracked open an eye, reluctantly pulling away from a particularly pleasant dream that had no details aside from a pulsing, all encompassing, overwhelming, wonderful sense of _Steve Steve Steve_ …

Only to see that Steve was gone.

Tony gasped, sitting up in the chair, his back and neck predictably cracking from yet again falling asleep slouched.  He couldn’t care about that much, not with the bed in front of him very much empty.  The covers were thrown back, the pillows smooshed and the sheets rumpled, but there was quite obviously a missing super soldier.

“Shit,” Tony whispered.  He jolted to his feet, staggering away from the chair.  “JARVIS?”

“I tried waking you, sir.”  If Tony didn’t know it was impossible, he’d have thought the AI sounded breathless.  “Captain Rogers left the bed approximately five minutes ago.  I prevented him from escaping the suite, but he is wandering.”

“Shit!”  That came out a bit more exasperated.  He fumbled for his little scanner before looking frantically around the bedroom.  It was still very dark, with deep shadows stretching across the space.  Through the massive floor-to-ceiling windows, the night was thick, no stars or moon.  The city was sleeping, quiet lights in a rainy distance.  Steve’s shield was still on the chair.  No sign of Steve himself, though.  “Where is he?”

“Out in the living area.  I believe he may be hallucinating.”

This was getting better and better.  Grinding his teeth, Tony raced out of the bedroom.  “Steve!”  He thundered down the hallway, quickly checking the study, guest room, and other bathroom just to be sure.  When he burst into the huge living area, Steve was right there where JARVIS said he’d be.  “Steve?”

Steve was standing by the windows.  He was still, stiff, looking out over the New York City skyline.  Even with things as cloudy as they were, the view was incredible from the top of the Tower.  Tony hesitantly took a step closer.  He swallowed down his fear and took another and another.  A million awful thoughts were racing through his head.  _Hallucinating._   What did that mean?  Was Steve imagining something terrible?  Lost in the past or tormented by the war?  Seeing ghosts from the life he’d so recently lost?  Tony knew well what nightmares and flashbacks and PTSD could do to a person.  If Bruce was right (and Tony was certain he was), Steve was bottling up a hell of a lot of damage and pain.  Was all that bleeding out now that this neurotoxin was wreaking havoc on his brain?  Was he dangerous, out of his mind?

Apparently not.  Well, not the dangerous part at least.  Steve turned around, face alight with shock and glistening with perspiration.  “Tony, I think there are more eggs down there.”

Tony stopped absolutely dead in his tracks.  “Huh?”

“Down in the city.  More eggs!”

“Um…”

Suddenly Steve was rushing at him.  Tony was so flabbergasted that he was actually afraid, given Steve was much stronger than him without his armor.  But Steve just grabbed Tony’s hand and pulled him to the window so that they were standing side by side and looking down into the city.  Tony stared at the sea of distant, twinkling lights.  There were watery and indistinct given the light rain.  “What am I looking at exactly?” he asked, getting more and more worried by the second.

Steve didn’t let go of his hand.  His palm and fingers were hot and dry, and his grip was tight and demanding.  He pointed with his other hand.  “Over there.  See?  See?”

Tony humored him and looked at where he was gesturing.  All he saw was a normal night, a really _late_ one.  Not even the first hints of dawn were painting the sky yet.  “Not really?”

“The giant robot thing was there,” Steve insisted, “dropping more eggs.  It was there.”

“Steve, there’s nothing there.”

“I _saw_ it, Tony,” Steve insisted.  “All those little lumps out there.  _Right out there.”_

“Steve–”

“Look!”  Steve wrapped an arm around him, hauling him closer, _close,_ right into Steve’s side.

Tony stiffened for a second at the suddenness of it, the nearness, the strength of his arm around him and the heat of Steve’s chest against his flank.  “Jesus.  JARVIS, is he running a fever?”

“I am detecting an abnormal high infrared signature, so it is certainly possible,” JARVIS gravely replied.  _Damn it._   “A fever could be contributing to his delirium, but it is also entirely possible that his confusion is stemming from the neurotoxin itself.  It is impossible to tell.”

It didn’t really matter.  No matter what was causing this, he needed to get Steve back to bed.  Gently he untangled himself from Steve’s grasp.  “Come on, Cap.  You shouldn’t be up.”

“Do you think we need to call them?”

“Call who?”

Steve turned to him, staring at him like he’d sprouted two heads or something.  “The team in,” he shortly replied, as if that should have been obvious.  “Avengers assemble.”  Tony just stared at him.  “The city’s under attack, Tony!  There are eggs all over.  Big ones.  The aliens are leaving them.  They’re thirsty.”

“And you’re definitely out of it,” Tony said, though he kept his tone even and level so as not to insult the other man.  “There are no aliens, Steve.  We kicked their asses, remember?  They went home.  Thor blew the hell out of their mech thing.  There are no eggs in the city.”

Steve looked utterly confused, his pale face fractured into a deep, muddled frown.  He glanced between Tony and the window, back and forth and back and forth, trying to figure it out.  Reconciling reality with whatever craziness he was seeing.

Craziness won.  “They’re out there!  You gotta believe me!  We need to call the team!  Thor and Hulk and Widow…  And…  And…”

“Yeah, I’d try to forget Barton too if I was loony toons,” Tony mumbled.

Steve shook his head, wincing.  “Loony toons?”

Tony pulled Steve along with him.  “Come on.  Back to bed.”

Surprisingly, Steve went.  He didn’t argue, didn’t debate, just put his arm around Tony at Tony’s prodding.  Tony led him out of the living area and back to the bedroom.  Steve was silent and complacent as Tony lowered him back into the bed.  Once he was laying down again, Tony brushed a hand over his forehead.  Yeah, he was unnaturally warm, but now it didn’t seem as bad.  Then again, what did Tony know?  He sighed, pulling the blankets up over Steve anew and taking out his scanner.  Another prick of Steve’s finger and another drop of blood into the tiny device yielded 84%.  Statistically that was probably insignificant, but it was lower by a point or two, so he’d take it.  “And you’re not puking anymore, so score one for us,” Tony said softly.  “But I don’t like fevers.  They’re not good.  I don’t think?”

Steve was already passed out again, so he didn’t answer.  Tony felt his forehead a second time, brushing blond hair back, but it wasn’t like this time was more revealing.  He didn’t have a thermometer, and it was occurring more and more to him that he needed some sort of continuous monitoring of Steve’s vitals.  His brain felt like it was firing on about half its normal cylinders.  He probably should have set that up hours ago.  Tired and irritated, he scrubbed a hand down his face and stood from the bed.  “JARVIS, I’m running down to the infirmary to get some stuff.”

“Yes, sir.  I suggest expediency.”

Expediency it was, even if he was sore and exhausted.  He rushed down to the elevator, pulling his phone out.  He dialed Bruce, and Bruce, true to his word, picked up right away.  “Tony?  What’s wrong?”

“He has a fever,” Tony blurted as he ran out of the elevator and burst back into the infirmary.  “And he’s confused as hell.  Delirious.  Not sure what that means.”

Bruce softly swore over the line.  “That’s not good.  Fevers don’t typically accompany neurotoxin exposure.”

Tony grabbed a case from the supply room and dumped it out on the counter.  He rifled through the contents, discarding bandages, gauze, and other first aid supplies and instead stuffing in things he needed, like a couple temporal thermometers, supplies to set up an IV, and a wireless pulse oximeter.  “Then why’s he so hot?” he gasped.  Doing all this one handed wasn’t helping, so he sent the call through the Tower’s PA system before he dropped the case.  Then he went in search of an oxygen mask.  “Unless we’re wrong about it.”

“And it’s an infection?  God.  I can’t begin to…  Actually.”  Bruce paused, and Tony could almost picture that hazy look he got to his eyes whenever he was lost in contemplation.  “You said he was delirious?  Is his heartbeat fast?  Is he sweating excessively?”

“Yeah and yeah.”

“Then maybe it’s hyperthermia.  As in the opposite of hypothermia.”

Tony set his pile of crap to the bed on which Steve had been lying earlier.  “That’s a thing?”

“As in heat stroke.”

That made him stop in his tracks from a mixture of surprise and worry.  “Don’t you get that from crossing a desert without water or something?”

“You can, but you can also get it from other factors, like some drugs, particularly psychotropic medications and a couple forms of anesthesia.  It’s not all that common, but it can happen, and if this neurotoxin is screwing around with his nervous system–”

“Thermodysregulation.”

“Bingo.”

Tony tipped his head back in exhaustion.  “Okay.  So what do I do?”

“Take him to SHIELD,” Bruce advised.  Yet again.

“He doesn’t want to go,” Tony argued tersely, rubbing at the headache starting to pound behind his forehead, “so besides that.”

Bruce took a deep breath.  “Well, first things first, I would rule out infection as a cause.  We have no idea what this is really, so we have to be sure.  Take a blood sample and do a white blood cell count.  Inflammation markers.  JARVIS can help you with everything.  _With_ the suit, Tony.  No chances.”

The thought of having to traipse all the way back upstairs only to have to come back down to the lab to run the blood tests did nothing to improve his mood.  “He practically puked all over me.  I think if this is contagious, I’m done for.”

“Humor me.”  Bruce’s tone was absolutely serious.  “And if that comes back negative, odds are good you’re dealing with his nervous system screwing up, in which case the symptoms _should_ revert once the serum starts to shut down the neurotoxin.  Any sign of improvement on that front?”

Tony pinched the bridge of his nose.  “Not yet.”

“Okay.  I didn’t expect there to be.  Anyway, treat the heat stroke.  You have to help his body cool itself.  Definitely get him to drink; dehydration is going to make this worse.  Try cool compresses on his head and chest, and if that doesn’t bring his temp down, a tepid bath should help.   But run the tests first because if this is an infection, he _needs_ to be quarantined right now.  You both do.”

 _Ugh._   “Okay.”

“Have JARVIS send me the results.”

A few minutes later, Tony was taking his haul of medical supplies back up to Steve’s floor.  Back inside the suite, he didn’t know why he was even surprised at what he found.  “What the hell are you doing, Rogers?”

There Steve was at his kitchen counter, and he was _cooking._   He had taken cartons of eggs out of his refrigerator, and he was whisking them in a bowl with some milk.  He grinned at seeing Tony come in.  “You want some breakfast?”

“What in the world…”  There were eggs _everywhere._   Shells on the granite counter.  Yolks and whites dribbled from the bowl to the floor.  Splatters all about.  Steve probably ate a ton of eggs on the regular (which Tony supposed made sense, given the typical weight training diet), and every single one of them seemed to be either in the bowl or cracked open all over the kitchen.

“Thought some eggs would be good,” Steve said brightly.  “It’s time for breakfast, isn’t it?  Feel like I just got up.”

“No?”

“Feel like I have eggs on the brain, too,” Steve said.  “Dunno why.  Is it hot in here?”

This was hell.  Tony Stark had died and gone to hell.  He set all his stuff down on the gleaming dinette table beside the kitchen and went to Steve’s side.  “You’re hot because your body is overheating,” he explained.  Something crunched under his foot, and he looked down to see an egg there.  Clearly Steve had dropped it (and quite a few of its buddies, now that Tony looked more carefully.  Lord, what a mess).  “And it’s three in the morning.  Not breakfast time.  Sleep time.”

“But I’m hungry,” Steve whined.  He whisked faster, only his hands were shaking so bad that most of the egg concoction ended up on his shirt.

“Obviously you don’t remember upchucking your entire dinner a couple hours ago.  Steve.  Steve.”  Steve kept whisking, ignoring Tony trying to stop him.  It seemed like he’d break the bowl, he was doing it so hard.  “Steve!”  Tony yanked the bowl away, which of course got raw egg and milk all over _his_ shirt, too.  Ignoring the gooey splatter soaking through to his skin, he sighed.  “Steven, you need to go back to bed.”

Either Steve didn’t hear him or didn’t care.  He turned around to crouch at the cabinets next to the stove.  “Gonna get the pan heated up.  Fire up the stove.”

Tony set the mixing bowl to the counter beside the battlefield of broken shells.  “Yeah, how about no to you having anything to do with fire right now.”  He took Steve’s arm and tugged him away from the counter.  “Come on.  Let me get you settled.”

Steve looked equal parts devastated and irritated.  “Nobody thinks I can handle anything,” he huffed.  “I know how to work a stove!  I know how to work lots of stuff!  Just because everything is all fancy and technologically advanced–”  He put that in air quotations.  Talk about being both modern and dated at the same time.  Tony wondered if Clint had shown him that.  “–doesn’t mean I can’t figure it out.  We had stoves back in the forties, you know!  We cooked all the time.”

“I know you did,” Tony placated, leading Steve away from the kitchen, “and if you hadn’t been poisoned by some kind of crazy alien gunk, I’d have complete faith in you to whip me up some really tasty eggs.  But you’re a _little_ punch drunk right now, Cap, and I’d prefer that you not burn down my Tower.”

Steve glowered and grumped his way back into the bedroom.  Tony deposited him on the side of the bed and took one look at the mess all over him before heaving a long-suffering sigh before going into the bathroom and getting a damp washcloth.  He came back to find Steve up again, looking around with a hint of panic in his eyes.  “Can’t find my shield.”

Tony grasped his shoulder and steered him back to the bed.  He made him sit.  “Right over there,” he said with a tip of his head to the chairs on the other side of the room by the entrance to the private balcony.  “And you don’t need it right now.”

Confusion glowed brightly in Steve’s eyes.  “Thought we had to fight something?  Aliens?  Chicago?”

Lord, he was just out of his mind.  Tony wiped at his face and arms, washing the drying stickiness away.  “No aliens,” he said.  “No breakfast.  And definitely no eggs.  Okay?  You need to sleep.”

Like a small child, Steve recoiled as Tony cleaned him up.  “Stop,” he crabbed, slapping Tony’s hands away.

“Let me get this wiped off you,” Tony snarled, trying to hang onto his patience.  “Christ, how the hell’d you get it in your hair?”

“Leave me alone.”  Tony didn’t, working the washcloth through Steve’s hair, wringing the fabric out a little to get some extra liquid with which to work.  That actually made Steve more cooperative probably because it felt good.  His skin was searing hot.  As irritated as he was, Tony couldn’t help his sympathy.  Steve looked miserable.  “Don’t we…  Don’t we need to go?”

“All you need to do is sleep,” Tony said again.  “Get up.”

Surprisingly Steve obeyed, standing anew and letting Tony pull his dirty shirt off.  He tossed it in the general vicinity of the hamper.  At least this time he was too aggravated to spend time checking Steve out.  Plus the heat radiating off him was pretty damn disturbing again, so that was worrying enough to keep his exhausted, addled mind on target.  Then he realized as he was peeling Steve’s pajama pants off that Bruce told him to handle Steve only through Iron Man until they completely ruled out infection.  Whatever.  Tony was pretty convinced at this point that this was heat stroke.  Steve didn’t _look_ like he had an infection, if that meant anything (and it probably didn’t).  More than that, Tony was right about what he’d said to Bruce before.  If this thing was contagious, he’d been exposed.  Damage was done, and doing everything inside Iron Man was a pain.

Still, he should go out and at least get the gloves and facemask he’d brought down.  “Alright,” Tony murmured, more to himself than Steve.  He fetched another shirt and pair of pajama pants from the stack he’d procured before and set to getting Steve dressed again (and not checking him out.  Again.  God, this was bullshit).  Steve fumbled to get his legs into the pants, pretty well uncoordinated.  He was even sloppier about putting his arms into the shirt.  Tony watched in unabashed concern.  “You okay?”

“Hot,” Steve whined.  “Whyzzit so hot?”

Tony didn’t have it in him to explain again.  “You think you can drink something?  Keep it down?”

Steve stared at him with bleary eyes.  “Team’s waitin’.  Gotta go fight.”

“No fighting.  No cooking.  Do you think you can – never mind.”  Tony sighed and pushed Steve down onto the bed, pulling the sheet up over his trembling body.  He figured the duvet would only add to Steve’s discomfort.  “Stay here.  I need to grab some stuff.”

“Aliens coming,” Steve murmured, eyes pretty much a million miles away.  “Can see ’em coming.”

Tony pinched the bridge of his nose in pain and irritation again before turning around and walking quickly out of the room.  “This is shit,” he moaned, rushing back to the living area.  “JARVIS…”

“Cool drinks,” the AI advised, “and cool compresses.  Get a blood sample, sir, and run the test.”

 _Calm down and focus._   Tony sucked a deep breath in, picking up his supplies on the way to the kitchen.  He avoided the slippery spots all over the floor, noticing now that there was butter and what looked like flour caked on the cabinets.  “God, was he trying to bake?”

“Pancakes, perhaps,” JARVIS offered, like that was helpful.

Tony grimaced and went to the fridge, pulling the door open.  There actually wasn’t much in there, but a whole shelf was devoted to Powerade.  Tony almost did a double-take.  That was fortuitous.  And ironic.  “Hey, look.  A high carbohydrate, high sugar, high salt solution!”  It was even orange.  Tony rolled his eyes at himself and snatched a couple of bottles from Steve’s massive supply.  “Now with neurotoxin for an extra invigorating experience.”

“Sir.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tony grumbled.  He gathered everything, also taking a bowl from the cabinet, and went back to Steve’s bedroom.

And promptly cried out in frustration.  “What the _hell,_ Rogers?”

Steve was standing _again._   Out of bed _again._   And practically naked.  He’d stripped off his t-shirt and pajama pants, the ones in which Tony had _just dressed him_.  He shook his head like he had no idea what the problem was.  “What?”

Alright, this wasn’t fair.  Tony didn’t have the willpower to stop himself when it was on display like this.  It was…  Yeah.  Yeah, okay, it was as amazing as he’d always pictured it every time he’d mentally undressed the captain or every time he’d caught himself staring at the way Steve’s uniform hugged his form so well or the way his clothes fit him.  Maybe even more so.  Miles of pale, toned, smooth skin.  Muscles that screamed strength and power but none of them so large or overly prominent as to be grotesquely in your face or vulgar.  Rounded biceps and perfect pecs and an eight-pack of abs that seemed impossible.  Broad shoulders that tapered into his narrow hips.  His shirts and uniform always telegraphed that trait, but actually seeing it…  Steve was every bit as beautiful as Tony had imagined.  A literal Adonis.

Said Adonis had his thumbs hooked into the waistband of his boxer briefs.  The ones that pretty much hid nothing and in a couple seconds would be pooled around his ankles.  He stopped, staring at Tony in confusion.  “I’m hot,” he said like that should be obvious.  And it was.  It was all _too_ obvious.

“No shit,” Tony gasped, setting all his junk to the bed and coming closer just in time to stop Steve from disrobing completely.  He didn’t know whether to be horrifically turned on or just horrified.  He was both and so utterly flustered that he couldn’t even think of a witty or flirty rejoinder.  He had nothing, absolutely nothing.  “I, um…”  He pulled Steve’s hands away from his underwear.  What crazy perversion of reality was this where, first, Steve Rogers was _undressing_ in front of him, and, second and even more ridiculous, he was _stopping him?_   “Let’s not get naked, okay?  Preserve your modesty and all that.”

Steve seemed totally confused.  “But it’s hot.”

“Don’t care.  You’re not thinking straight.  Keep the underwear on.”

Steve actually pouted.  _Pouted._   Lower lip out and everything.  Tony’s mouth went dry and his heart pounded and standing this close to the other man was like being in a blast furnace.  God, how was he supposed to do this like a mature, caring, considerate adult?  “Keep the underwear on,” he said again, and it sounded like he was begging.  He kind of was.  “Please.”

Steve stared into his eyes.  They were closer than they’d ever been, close enough to kiss, and Tony had his hands on Steve’s hands, and they were both grabbing the elastic of his underpants.  Steve was breathing hard, the muscles of his lower stomach brushing against Tony’s fingers with every labored gasp.  The moment was… weird.  Weird and uncomfortable but at the same time really intimate.  “Okay, Tony.”

Tony sighed in relief.  _You’d never forgive me afterward.  Never forgive yourself._   The thing was, though, the thing he couldn’t think let alone say but _knew_ in the quiet of his heart…  He’d never be able to forgive himself, either.  He pulled Steve’s hands away and pushed him back down onto the bed.  “Okay.  Just lay there, okay?  I’m gonna take some blood and get you cooled off.  Lay still.”

Steve nodded obediently.  “Okay, Tony,” he said again.  The fact that he was calling him _Tony_ was somehow making this worse.  He was calling him _Tony_ so softly, so trustingly.  Again with the awkward intimacy.

It left Tony reeling even more.  He shook that away and went back to the bathroom with the bowl.  As he stood filling it at the sink with cold water, he squeezed his eyes shut.  _It’s my fault he’s like this.  He wouldn’t_ be _like this if his brain wasn’t being boiled in poison._   Ergo, this wasn’t real.  Not any of it.  Not the open affection he thought he saw in Steve’s eyes back there.  Not the trust.  This wasn’t _Steve_ talking.  This was the toxin.  He went back trying to convince himself of that, that it didn’t matter if he was the one taking care of Steve.  Steve would be this open and vulnerable and trusting with anyone.

Steve was still in bed this time, thank God, panting atop the sheets.  He was shining with sweat.  “Enough screwing around,” Tony muttered, and he kicked himself into gear.  He cracked open the cold Powerade and sat beside Steve on the bed.  “Here, Cap.  Drink some of this.”  He helped Steve sit up a little, wishing he’d thought to find a straw or at least a cup.  Slowly Steve took a sip of the sports drink, but once he started, he was practically gulping it.  “Easy.  Easy.  Let’s make sure you keep it down, huh?”  Tony took the bottle away.

“Thirsty,” Steve whispered.

“I know.  But it’s not going to do you any good if you bring it all back up,” Tony admonished gently.  “More in a minute.”  He set the bottle to the nightstand beside the bed and took his scanner out.  Then he donned some gloves and the facemask.  He pricked Steve’s finger.

“Ow,” Steve complained.  “That hurt.”  He cracked open bleary eyes and stared at Tony.  “What’s with the mask?  I ain’t sick.”

The Brooklyn drawl in Steve’s voice was novel and ridiculously appealing.  Tony had had no idea it even existed until now, that Steve apparently put effort into curtailing his accent.  “Just a precaution,” he said before smearing the blood on the device’s test area.

Steve gave a crooked smile.  “You look goofy.”  If Tony didn’t know better, he’d have thought he giggled a little.

It wasn’t funny, though.  The meter aggravatingly proclaimed an 82% toxicity level, like it was taunting him.  Growling lowly, Tony put it aside and fished the thermometer out of the case of supplies.  It was one of those fancy temporal jobs, hospital grade.  He got it out of the sterile wrapper.  “Okay, let’s see what temp you’re baking at.”  Swiping the thermometer around Steve’s face, he leaned back when it beeped.  “102.”

Steve shrugged.  “That’s not bad.”

“It’s not good, either,” Tony argued.

“It is severe enough to monitor closely,” JARVIS clarified, “but not an emergency at this point.”

Tony set the thermometer aside.  “What he said.”  He dunked a washcloth in the cold water.  “Though it’s enough of an emergency, you know.  You sure you don’t want to go to SHIELD?”  After wringing out the excess, he set the wet cloth to Steve’s forehead.

Steve blinked and licked his lips.  “Cold.”

“Yeah, that’s the point.  Anyway, SHIELD?  Real doctors?  People who actually know what they’re doing?”

“No.”  Steve shook his head.  “No, no.  This is fine.”

 _What is it with him and doctors?_   There was nothing rational about Steve’s increasingly apparent aversion to all things medical, and that craziness had nothing to do with the poison clouding up his mind. Tony didn’t argue, though.  If he couldn’t convince Steve before when he was halfway sane, now would be a lost cause.  He took a few more washcloths, wet them in the cold water, and laid them out on Steve’s bare chest and belly.  He spent the next few minutes cooling him.  Keeping busy with that also kept his brain from thinking about how good Steve looked, even like this.  His skin was wet and flushed all the way down his neck and shoulders, down his chest, along all those hills and valleys of his muscles.  Clearly he was a full body blusher.  Another fact about Steve that he really didn’t have the right to know.  _Stop._   Tony washed away some of the sweat, running the wet cloth everywhere he could.  “Feel any better?”

“Tickles,” Steve whimpered, shifting uncomfortably.  Tony wiped at his stomach again, and he burst out laughing.  “S-stop!  Stop!”

Tony didn’t stop, especially when he checked Steve’s temperature again and saw it was a little better.  Steve launched into full-fledged giggling, curling and trying to protect his belly from Tony.  “Steve, come on,” Tony said, long-suffering and too tired to be anything but irritated.  “Quit it.”

“You quit it,” Steve argued petulantly.  His period of relative lucidity was over already.  “Thought I saw him out there.”

Tony sighed.  “Saw who?”

“Easter bunny.  Dropping a bunch of bad eggs.”  Steve dissolved into a fit of laughing, almost hysterical with it, and Tony had no idea what was so funny.  “Avengers assemble to take out Peter Cottontail!”

“Cap, come on.  Take it easy.”

The laughing went on longer.  Tony let Steve have at it.  There didn’t seem to be any point in trying to talk to him like this.  Eventually Steve’s giggles died to softer chuckles and then nothing.  Tony watched him stare into the shadows overhead, the weird euphoria slipping away as randomly and abruptly as it came.  He gave him another drink of Powerade, and Steve was far less enthusiastic about guzzling it this time.  “Steve?”

“Always liked Peter Cottontail,” Steve whispered.  “Liked the book.  Liked Easter.”  Apparently this was the free association point of the evening.  Or the morning.  Tony didn’t know which anymore.  He laid the last of the cloths on Steve’s torso before reaching for the kit to draw the blood sample.  Steve seemed fairly sedate at the moment, so now was a good time.  “Easter was nice.  Always liked Easter.”

“Why’s that?” Tony asked.  In truth, he wasn’t entirely paying attention, readying the needle and the collection vial and the tourniquet.  He took Steve’s left arm and pulled it into his lap before tightly wrapping the tourniquet around his bicep.  His veins weren’t so easy to find now, which probably meant he was getting dehydrated from vomiting and sweating, just like Bruce had said.  Tony shook his head in worry, sliding the needle in Steve’s arm.  Steve didn’t react at all.  “Steve?”

Steve grunted.  “Meant I made it through.”

“Huh?”  When enough blood was in the vial, Tony retracted the needle and pressed a piece of gauze to the oozing hole.  “What do you mean?”

“Meant I lived.  Made it through another winter.”

Tony looked up sharply, shocked at that.  Steve was crashing hard.  Tony could see it in his face, in his eyes.  They were teary and clouded, bereft of the giddy emotion before.  Dull and dark.  It was heart-breaking, when he really considered what Steve was saying.  That Easter heralded spring, warmer weather, the end of snow and ice and cold.  The end of cold and flu season.  He’d never really thought about it, what it must have been like to be sick all the time as a child.  Not knowing if you’d survive another brutal winter.  Not knowing if your weak, asthmatic lungs and poor heart and inadequate immune system would be enough to sustain you.  Being so damn happy to see Easter come, to feel the sun and warmer air and the promise of better health.  It was sad as hell, and Tony didn’t know what to say.  He wasn’t even sure it was his place to say anything.

So he didn’t.  “I’m going to go run this test,” he said to Steve, although Steve seemed to be nodding off.  His eyes were half-lidded, and he’d settled down considerably.  His arm was limp in Tony’s hands as he set it across Steve’s naked stomach.  Carefully he rewet each of the cloths and replaced them.  Steve didn’t react at all this time, silent and still.  He was breathing slowly through dried, cracking lips, and his eyes finally closed all the way.  Tony bit his lower lip worriedly.  “Be back as soon as I can be.  Stay here.  Don’t get up again.  You hear me?”

Steve didn’t answer.  Tony stood, taking the blood sample with him.  He looked down on Steve, uncertain as hell.  “JARVIS, would it be morally reprehensible to tie him to the bed?”

“Sir–”

“Don’t bother.  It’s fine.  I think.  Just…  Expediency, right.”

“Yes.  I will place his room on lockdown.  Should he awake again, there will be nowhere for him to go.”

That wasn’t much comfort, so Tony ran.  It was pretty shocking he had the energy to do that, but there he was, tearing down the hall to the elevator yet again, taking it down _yet again,_ and rushing back into Banner’s lab.  JARVIS had already turned on the relevant machinery, and he was quick to guide Tony through performing the analysis on Steve’s blood for evidence of infection.  After thoroughly sterilizing the scanner, Tony also took a second to check himself for any signs of the neurotoxin.  _0%._   That was a relief.  With the rest of the tests running and the computer primed to deliver the results to both Bruce and himself, Tony dragged himself back to Steve’s floor.

He didn’t know what he was expecting to find this time as JARVIS unlocked the bedroom door for him, but Steve soundly asleep in his bed wasn’t it.  Needless to say, it was something of a relief to see him there, basically in the exact same position he’d been left in, naked except his underwear and sweating up a storm on top of his sheets.  Tony heaved a relieved sigh.  “Hurray for small miracles,” he muttered.  He checked the time; it was almost four in the morning.  Nearly twelve hours after Steve had been exposed and three after he’d become ill.  It felt like a miserable eternity, and he was beyond tired.

He went back to it, though, swiping Steve’s forehead and temple with the thermometer and finding his temperature slightly improved to 101.6 (again, that was hardly proof of anything, but it made him feel useful, so he believed it was a good omen).  He checked his blood toxicity level, too (and that was holding steady at 81%).  Then he set to rewetting the cloths that had gone dry and warm in the twenty minutes or so that he’d been gone.  The water wasn’t so cold anymore, so he replaced it with the tap in the bathroom and went out to the kitchen to get some ice.  He foraged around Steve’s cupboards for a second, looking for something with caffeine in it for himself because he was slipping into bleary exhaustion faster than he’d prefer.  There was nothing.  He supposed that made sense, given caffeine had no effect on Steve.  All the coffee he could find required an actual old-timey percolator, the kind you used on a stove, and that was too much work.  He would have preferred soda or an energy drink, anyway.

Disgruntled, he went back to the bedroom and starting wiping Steve down anew.  Steve slept through that, which was good because Tony didn’t think he had the wherewithal to deal with more delirium.  He kept at it, dunking the dry cloths into the ice water, wringing them out, laying them on Steve’s head, neck, chest, and stomach, rubbing down the length of his arms and thighs, basically cooling every part of exposed skin.  He drifted while he worked, trying not to think too much about anything.  This was lulling in a way, dunking, wringing, wiping.  Rinsing and repeating.  Listening to Steve’s steady albeit shaky breathing.  Feeling his heartbeat pounding in a rapid flutter under his fingers every time he checked for his pulse at his neck or wrist.  Monotonous yet still intimate.  He wasn’t sure he deserved to feel anything but detached professionalism doing this, but he did.  He felt a lot.  Too much.

“Sir, the test results are ready.”

Tony jerked out of the stupor into which he’d fallen, nearly spilling the bowl of ice water as he sat up more.  He dropped the cloth he was working down Steve’s chest onto the side of the bed, and it soaked through the sheets instantly.  Shaking his head at himself, he picked it up and spread it over Steve’s sternum.  “And?” he asked.

“No signs of infection.”

Tony supposed that was a relief, but it wasn’t.  It just meant he wasn’t at risk, and it meant he didn’t really have a compelling excuse to override Steve’s wishes and get help from SHIELD.  He rubbed his aching head, abandoning his task and setting the bowl to the bedside table.  “Yay?”

“Indeed.”  JARVIS’ tone suggested he wasn’t sure this was a good thing, either.

Tony shook himself more awake, but it was a losing battle.  He could barely read the screen on the thermometer when he took Steve’s temperature.  “Yay,” he said again.  “We’re down to 100.3.”

“Excellent.  Then perhaps the worst of the situation has passed.”

Maybe.  It certainly was tempting to think that.  And he certainly _should_ do more, because this could also simply be a lull in the storm.  Steve was sleeping and therefore cooperative right now, so Tony should set up the monitoring equipment he brought up and probably try to string an IV.  Get some steady hydration into his patient and all that.  However, the thought of disturbing Rogers was too distressing to bear.  Steve was quiet and sedate and resting.  No reason to ruin that right now.  “You think it’s okay if I sleep?” he asked.  “Just for a little bit.  I just need maybe thirty minutes.”

“As long as you make it a priority that Captain Rogers receive fluids when you wake, I believe a brief respite is alright,” JARVIS declared.

“Yep,” Tony agreed.  He barely made it to the chair again, slumping into it.  “Soon as I wake up.”

* * *

“Sir?  Sir!  _Sir!_ ”

Tony lurched awake with a gasp only to find himself staring at Steve’s empty bed.  “Ah, shit,” he moaned, clambering to his feet.  _Not again._   “JARVIS–” 

“He’s out on the balcony, sir!”  Tony looked to the doors across the bedroom beyond the seating area.  There was nothing there except rain on the windows.  Steve’s shield was gone, though.  “By the living room!” JARVIS clarified.  He sounded absolutely _panicked._ There was fear in his voice the likes of which Tony had never heard before.  “Hurry!”

The fear he heard didn’t compare at all to what he felt.  He staggered around the bed and down the hallway, his limbs not functioning well enough to actually run with any coordination.  “How – how – I thought you locked everything down!”

“He broke open the door!” JARVIS cried.  A cold, damp wall of air blasted over Tony the second he raced into the living room.  Sure enough, across the huge room the glass door was shattered, like Steve had just smashed it with all his strength.  That probably wasn’t far from the truth.  Terrified, Tony avoided stepping on the glass everywhere and slipped through the hole.

It was still so dark out, dark and cold and wet.  Steve was still in his just underwear, and he was standing by the balcony’s railing, looking out over the city.  He had his shield on his right arm.  It was glistening with rain, as was his skin, but he wasn’t even shivering.  He was about as close to the edge of the building as he could be, gripping the railing tightly, the big muscles of his thighs clenched like he was prepared to jump.  _Holy shit._   Tony had no doubt that he could get up and over, even though the metal and glass barrier of the railing was up to his chest.  He’d be able to vault that without even trying, and the drop…  They were on the forty-first floor of the Tower.  The drop would kill him without a doubt.  _Holy shit holy shit holy shit–_   “Holy shit.”

His voice was nothing more than a strained, panicked whisper, but Steve heard it.  He twisted around, and his eyes were aglow with fever and consuming delirium.  There was a cut on his forehead and another on his cheek, both of them weeping blood.  They’d probably come from the door shattering.  “They’re not eggs,” he gasped.  “They’re not eggs!”

Tony had no idea what to do.  Steve was absolutely out of his mind, worse than before even, and he was so strong that there was nothing Tony could do to stop him.  He wasn’t certain any attempt to wouldn’t end in some sort of struggle, and without his armor, Tony didn’t stand a chance.  Steve could hurt him or worse without meaning to.  “JARVIS,” Tony murmured, never taking his eyes off Steve.

JARVIS read his mind.  “Summoning Iron Man.”

“Steve…”  Tony chanced a step forward.  “Steve, listen to me.  You’re okay.  There’s nothing out there.”

“They’re not eggs, Tony.”  Steve looked scared to death.  He was ridiculously pale, eyes ringed in lilac, hair plastered to his forehead and dripping water down his face.  The blood was dark on his cheeks.  “I can see them.”

“There’s _nothing_ out there.”

“Yes, there is!” Steve shouted.  “Big shadows in the distance.  Don’t you see?”  Tony didn’t see anything different than before: dark but peaceful buildings that were covered in blurry lights, only now they were a little more distinct with the first touches of dawn in the sky.  “They’re coming.  They’re coming, and I gotta stop them.  I gotta–”

“Who’s coming?”  Maybe playing along would be better.  He’d do _anything_ to get Steve away from that edge.

Steve shook his head frantically.  “The Chitauri.”  Tony went even colder at that.  The light rain felt like ice on his skin.  “They’re coming back to finish it.  They’re coming back.  I can see ’em.”  Steve’s voice broke.  “Like a big swarm.  They’re right outside the city.  They’re coming to kill everyone.”

 _Jesus._   All the other hallucinations and craziness before had been fairly innocuous, but this?  This was a waking nightmare.  And it wasn’t just a nightmare Steve had.  It was one he shared with Tony, shared with Romanoff and Barton.  They _all_ had been affected by New York, by the fact that the six of them had stood together against a horde of alien enemies and barely stemmed the flood of their invasion.  Tony himself had struggled so much in the aftermath of it with PTSD that he sometimes forgot that the rest of the team suffered, too.

Like now.  “Steve, listen to me,” he implored softly, trying to seem as quiet and nonthreatening as possible.  “They’re gone.  Loki’s gone.  We beat them all.”

“The Tesseract–”

“Thor took the Tesseract back to Asgard,” Tony gently reminded.  “It’s over.  We won.”

Confusion worked its way over Steve’s face.  He looked like he wanted to believe Tony, but his senses (and the hallucination he was clearly experiencing) were doing everything in their power to convince him not to.  He gripped the railing tighter, and Tony’s heart all but stopped.  “Please.  Step back.  You’re not where you think you are.  This is dangerous.  You need to step back.”

“I can’t,” Steve said, his voice all twisted up in a desperate sob.  “I can’t!”

“Why?”

“Because I can’t let you go out there again!  I can’t let that happen again!”

Now Tony was the one utterly confused.  Shock and horror worked over him.  “What’re you talking about?”

Steve turned to him, breathing harshly through his nose like he was fighting to hang on.  His eyes were wet, and Tony couldn’t tell if it was rain or sweat or tears.  “You fell.  You fell outta the sky.  I couldn’t…  I just stood there.  I couldn’t stop it.  I can’t let that happen again.  I can’t, Tony.  I can’t lose you.”  Something inside Tony throbbed in anguish.  “So I gotta go out there and fight.”  And he went to do just that, gripping the railing and making to jump.

_“No, Steve!”_

All the sudden Iron Man jetted up from below, the armor’s eyes glowing brightly in the darkness as it hovered right in front of the balcony.  JARVIS was remote piloting the suit, and it was ready to catch Steve should he jump.  Steve didn’t, though.  He backpedaled and slipped and ended up falling, scrambling away on the slick concrete.  “No, no, no,” he cried.  “No, Tony!  Send the armor away!  You can’t go!”

Tony moved fast, rushing across the distance between him and the other side of the balcony, and grabbed Steve’s shoulders.  Christ, he was _burning._ “I’m not going,” he promised, forcing his own emotions down.  “I’m not.  I’m right here.  Snap out of it!”  Steve struggled, but it was with a fraction of his normal strength and coordination.  He was shaking too hard, his movements jerky and weak, and Tony was able to get his shield away from him.  He tossed it back inside the Tower through the damaged door.  “Steve, listen to me.”

“No, please…”  Steve heaved a broken sob.  His hands were cut to hell, and he was smearing blood on Tony’s shirt as he grabbed at him.  “I have to–”

“Snap out of it, Steve!  You’re sick and you’re imagining things.  That’s it.  There’s no fight.  You’re not fighting.”

“Don’t go out there, Tony.  Don’t go!  You’ll die!  Don’t go!”

Tony grasped Steve’s face between his hands and stared into his eyes.  There was hardly any recognition here, just a haze of fever and pain and so much fear.  “I’m not going anywhere,” he swore, staring into those cloudy blue orbs no matter _how_ lost Steve was.  “No one’s going _anywhere._   You’re safe.  I’m safe.  _It’s over._ ”

Steve gasped, blinking loose tears, and now he seemed to focus a bit.  “It’s over?”

Tony nodded, not daring to hope just yet.  “It’s been over for months.  We’re all okay.”

A long moment escaped with the rain softly pattering around them.  Steve was searching Tony’s eyes, searching for something to believe in maybe, and Tony refused to look away until he found whatever he needed.  Eventually Steve choked on his breath and closed his eyes.  He nodded.  “Sorry,” he whispered.  He was shaking.  “Really sorry.”

Tony pulled the other man into a hug.  He was shaking, too, terrified with how close that had been.  “It’s alright.  You’re alright.”

Steve clung to him, reaching his arms up and around Tony’s back.  He held on for a second or two, but then his arms suddenly went lax and fell to the side.  “Steve?  Steve?”  Tony pulled back and looked down and saw that Steve was limp.  His face was slack, his eyes half-lidded, and – _God_ – he looked _dead._   The panic from before came back in an awful, dizzying rush.  Tony patted Steve’s uninjured cheek frantically.  “Steve!  Steve, can you hear me?  JARVIS!”

Iron Man thudded to the ground beside them.  “Get him inside, sir!” JARVIS shouted from within the Tower.

Tony tried to stand, pulling Steve’s limp body up with him, but Steve was too heavy.  With a soft whir of servos, Iron Man came to his aid, crouching and easily scooping the soldier out of Tony’s embrace.  Under JARVIS’ control, the armor carried him inside.  Tony followed, heart thundering, breaths shallow, mind racing.  After racing through the suite back to the bedroom, Iron Man set Steve’s body onto his bed.  Steve flopped down, his long limbs completely unmoving.  _Oh, God…_   “Is he–”

“He is overheating,” JARVIS declared gravely.  “IR scanners indicate a dangerously high body temperature.”

Tony staggered closer and fumbled for the thermometer.  He swiped it over Steve’s forehead.  _105._   “Oh, shit,” Tony moaned, terrified.  He had no idea how high a fever Steve could sustain with the serum, but JARVIS was right: in normal people, that was deadly.  And he’d been out in the cold rain, which meant that it might have been even _higher_ minutes before.  “What do I do?  What–”

“Ice, sir!”

Tony sprinted out of the bedroom and down the hall.  He tore through the living area, barreling back into the kitchen.  He nearly slipped on the egg mess, whacking his side painfully into the island before regaining his balance.  Fumbling for another bowl, he dumped all the ice he could from the freezer into it.  Then he raced to Steve.  “Okay, okay,” he gasped, trying to calm himself.  “Okay.”  He found a couple of sample bags in the medical supplies he’d brought up, and he rapidly assembled some ice packs.  “We’re going to take care of this.”

“Sir, you should consider taking him to a hospital.”

Tony couldn’t deal with that right now.  He started placing the ice around Steve’s body, up against his chest and groin, in his armpits.  “JARVIS, we’re going to need more ice.”

“Sir.”

“We have this,” he said again, more to himself than anyone else.  Steve groaned, blinking listlessly, freeing tears that streaked into his hair at his temples.  Tony couldn’t stand to look at his stricken face – _what the hell am I doing?  He needs a doctor.  This is insane and I’m crazy and he’s crazy and we shouldn’t be doing this_ – so instead he went back to cooling Steve’s chest and face with the wet washcloths.  “We can handle this.  It’s fine.”

JARVIS always had to be the voice of reason, that asshole.  “It is not fine.  A body temperature this high is a medical emergency.”

“For a normal person?  Yeah.  Maybe not for him.  Not yet.  Give me a chance to try and bring it down,” Tony argued.  His voice lacked any conviction.

“This is dangerous.”

It was.  He knew it was.  He couldn’t do this.  “Steve, wake up.”  He leaned over the other man, biting back a frenzied sob and patting his face again.  “Come on.  Wake up!  Can you hear me?”  Steve groaned.  “Steve?  Look at me.  Look at me!”  Another groan, this one hoarser, but Steve blinked more and seemed to focus.  Tony nodded once he was pretty sure he had Steve’s attention.  “I need to take you to a hospital.”

Steve grimaced and shook his head.  Obviously he was aware enough to be a stubborn pain in the ass.  “No.  No, I don’t want to.”

“For Christ’s sake, Cap.  You are seriously ill.  Don’t you–”

“No,” Steve said again, eyes suddenly sharp.  “Don’t want to go.  I’m fine.  Wait it out.”  It took a lot of energy and strength for him to say that, both of which he was lacking severely at the moment, yet there he was, boldly proclaiming how okay he was when he was burning alive from the inside out.  He was absolutely out of his goddamn mind.

And Tony couldn’t stand it.  “Steve, you are putting your life at risk here.”

Maybe if Steve was more lucid, he’d realize how insane he was acting.  As it was, he just shook his head more fervently and curled onto his side, dislodging all of Tony’s ice packs and cloths.  “’m fine,” he slurred again.  “Serum’ll stop it.  ’sides you said no one’s goin’ nowhere.”

 _I did say that.  Damn it._   “Steve–”

“Don’t make me go, Tony,” Steve begged.  “I don’t want to go.  Don’t make me.”

 _God._   “This is insane.  Totally insane.  Goddamn it, goddamn it…”  Tony had no idea what to say, what to do.  He buried his face in his hands, pulling at his hair as he fought to think.  “Okay, okay, okay–”

“He _requires_ a hospital,” JARVIS said again, slightly more imploringly.

“Are they gonna do anything more for him than I can?” Tony asked, resettling the ice packs and cold washcloths.  He took Steve’s temperature again and found it not at all lower.  “Shit.  This is–”

“There are other methods that can be tried in a medical setting, such as hemodialysis or the use of cold saline in intravenous hydration.”  JARVIS paused.  “Actually, there is… another option to cool him that can be performed here.  It is highly effective.”

Jolting in sudden interest and exhilaration, Tony gasped, “What?  What is it?”

JARVIS hesitated.  Were Tony’s brain not fried from the last difficult hours and exhaustion, he probably would have deduced why the AI was wary on his own.  Hell, he probably would have thought up the idea on his own.  As it was, when JARVIS explained, it took him completely by surprise.  “Immersion in an ice bath.”

 _No._   Tony’s brain went to one place and one place only: a plane loaded with HYDRA bombs in 1945, crashing into the ice shelf of Greenland and slowly sinking as it flooded with frigid ocean water.  Captain America _freezing to death_ in that.  Or drowning first and then freezing.  He didn’t know for sure, and it didn’t matter, because no matter how you sliced that, it was hell, and he wasn’t about to subject Steve to that kind of torture.  His tongue felt thick in his mouth, and his brain was spinning with no traction.  “No, I can’t…  I can’t do that to him.”

“Aggressive ice-water immersion is considered the gold-standard treatment for heat stroke this serious,” JARVIS firmly declared, as if he’d sold himself on this now that he’d mentioned it.  “If you intend to keep Captain Rogers here, I insist that you attempt this approach.  And, should that fail to lower his temperature, you _must_ take him to a hospital.”

“Jesus,” Tony whimpered.  He stared at Steve, utterly horrified at the choice before him.  He didn’t want to make it.  Steve seemed mostly unconscious again, so asking him seemed to be a waste of time.  Plus he couldn’t even fathom it.  _Hey, Steve, which do you want?  A trip to the hospital, which for some reason you think is equivalent to the worst torture imaginable, or the actual worst torture imaginable: a trip down trauma lane._   It was half dozen of one, six of another because in all likelihood the doctors at SHIELD would subject him to the ice bath too, particularly if it was the most effective treatment.  The inevitability of it didn’t make Tony feel any better, though it did make his decision for him.  “God, forgive me for this one.  Okay, J, what do I need to do?”

It wasn’t like this was all that complicated, but Tony couldn’t think.  At JARVIS’ instruction, he left Steve on the bed before running to the communal kitchen a few floors down.  There was a massive walk-in freezer there, and he grabbed some five-pound bags of ice, as much as he could carry.  Body aching and heart pounding in fright and mind totally lost in guilt, he lugged the ice back up to Steve’s floor.  In the bathroom, he ripped open the bags and dumped the cubes into the spacious tub.  More ice would have been nice, but there wasn’t any to be had conveniently.  “I will run the water as cold as possible,” JARVIS assured.  “It should be sufficient.”

Tony felt sick looking at the liquid that started pouring into the tub from the faucets.  Experimentally he touched it and found it absolutely frigid.  His stomach knotted up, and biting his lower lip was all that kept him from getting sick.  “What are the odds this, I don’t know… makes him go into shock or something?”  The thought was terrifying.

“It is possible, but the odds of him dying from heat stroke are far higher at this point.”

 _Christ._ “We can’t drug him somehow, can we?  So that he cooperates.”

“It would likely not have an effect, and I would hesitate to introduce any further chemicals into the situation,” JARVIS said.

“Then how are we going to get him in there?  Keep him in here?  He’s out of his mind, and this is…”  _His worst nightmare._   “He’ll fight me.”  Tony closed his eyes.  Steve would wake up the second they tried to force him into the bath.  He knew it.  And the tub was large enough that he’d have room to struggle.  “I suppose I could…”  The thought of being in that freezing water was disturbing, but he’d do it.

“Wear the suit, sir.”

There was no choice.  Whether Tony took Steve to a hospital or SHIELD or the bathtub, right here he would need Iron Man.  He gritted his teeth as JARVIS brought the suit closer, as the armor closed around him again.  Then he went back to the bed.  He stared at Steve where he lay unmoving, hating himself and Rogers and those asshole aliens who’d dropped the mystery eggs and this entire screwed up situation.  Iron Man’s infrared scanners were registering Steve’s ridiculously high fever, blinking warnings to the side of the HUD that only served to further eviscerate Tony’s nerves.  “Alright,” he said after a feeble breath to steady himself.  He reached out a hand toward the bed to pull Steve toward him.

But then he stopped himself.  It suddenly occurred to him that after this Steve might come to associate Iron Man with what was going to be a rather unpleasant experience.  Similarly, the sight of the armor could be frightening, especially if Tony was using it to force Steve to do something he didn’t want to do.  So he reached up, pressed the release for the helmet, and pulled it back off.  A deeper breath felt more cleansing, as well.  “Alright.”

“Hurry.”

“Steve?  Steve, come on.”  Tony shook Steve’s shoulder.  “Can you open your eyes?  Can you get up?”

Steve groaned.  Tony couldn’t tell if he was fully awake.  It’d definitely be better if he wasn’t, though Tony felt like a rat bastard for subjecting Steve to this without explaining what and why first.  It wasn’t terribly likely that Steve was cognizant enough to understand, but it still seemed wrong.  Regardless, he looped one arm under Steve’s knees and the other around his shoulders before lifting him off the bed.  The suit whirred softly, bearing all the weight as he took Steve into the bathroom.  Then he paused, staring at the tub and piles of ice cubes.  _What the hell am I doing?_   Before he let himself change his mind, he lowered Steve into the tub.

And Steve snapped awake with a scream.  The second the ice water touched his calves, his eyes popped wide open and he started struggling something fierce.  Luckily with Iron Man’s strength and Steve’s muscles all screwed up and his brain all hazy with delirium, he couldn’t really get away.  “Easy,” Tony implored, struggling to stay calm.  “Easy.  Settle down.”

“No,” Steve cried.  “No, no, no–”

“It’s not–”

“No!”

“You need this,” Tony assured, pushing Steve more into the water until his lower body was completely submerged.  Steve threw his head back and wailed, water splashing everywhere as he scrambled.  He was clutching Tony so tightly that his fingertips dented Iron Man’s plating.  Tony grimaced, stilling Steve’s hands, and climbed in with him.  He pulled the ailing soldier into his embrace, Steve’s back to his chest, and then got them both under the ice water.  Through the suit, he couldn’t really feel how cold it was.

Steve could, though.  Clearly.  He screamed again, trying to wrench away from Tony’s grip.  “Get off me!  Get off!”

“Steve–”

 _“No!”_   He kicked, squirmed, thrashed, did _anything_ he could to dislodge Tony from him.  Nothing worked.  Tony held fast.  He _had_ to hold fast, no matter what.  No matter how much this hurt.  Steve was almost hyperventilating, sobbing and fighting.  “I can’t do this again!  No, no, no!”

It was hard to tell how much Steve understood, how much he could understand.  If he even knew what was going on anymore or why.  Tony had to try.  “Listen to me!  Listen!  You’re running a dangerously high fever!  The neurotoxin is screwing up your body’s ability to maintain its temperature–”

Steve howled again, his mangled cry echoing through the bathroom.  “Let me go!  _Let me go!_ ”

“I can’t,” Tony replied, his voice breaking.  “We have to bring your temperature down, and nothing else is working.”

“No, no, please!  Please!”

Tony used the suit’s strength to get him more submerged and hold him there.  “Steve, don’t fight.  Come on.  Don’t fight me!”  He grabbed Steve’s arms, tightly enough around his wrists to hold him but hopefully not tight enough to cause pain or bruise, and folded them over Steve’s chest.  He pressed both their bodies as fully into the bathwater as he could, hooking his ankles around Steve’s shins to keep his legs down.  He was curled around the other man like an iron weight.  The water washed over them, covering Steve completely to his chin.  Steve shuddered, shivering like crazy.  “Take it easy,” Tony hushed.  “It’s alright.  It’s alright.”

“Please don’t make me do this, Tony,” Steve sobbed.  At least he was grounded enough in the here and now that he _knew_ Tony, knew he wasn’t back on that plane, hurtling toward the ocean and his own death.  At least he knew that.  “I can’t!  I can’t!  Please!”  He dissolved into a fit of panicked crying, submitting because he knew he couldn’t escape.  Maybe that was how it had happened in the crushed cockpit of that plane, too.  A desperate struggle to survive against a flood of ice and ocean that turned into miserable surrender upon the realization that there was no escape.  The defeat on Steve’s face was devastating.

It took a lot to break Tony’s heart nowadays.  The pain he’d known in his life, the death of his parents and the abandonment and Afghanistan and the traumas since…  Nearly dying a few months back.  All of that had hardened him, birthed defenses he had a hard time shedding.  There was something about this, though, and it went beyond the obvious, beyond Tony having to physically _restrain_ Steve in tub full of ice and freezing water.  It was the broken look on Steve’s face, the abject terror in Steve’s eyes, the desperation in his reedy pleas.  That cut through to Tony’s core, stirred to life feelings of compassion and understanding, a need to protect, a need to _make this better_ because he cared so much, so deeply.  Just because he…

He closed his eyes and loosened his grip a bit.  “You’re going to be okay,” he promised.  “It’s okay.  Easy.  Easy.”

Steve was going lax, shivering wildly but hardly moving at all anymore of his own volition.  Every breath he exhaled was twisted up with a wheezing sob, but he wasn’t trying to fight.  He was quiet, crushed down.  The ice and the water settled into a calm, little pool.  After a long while filled with only slowing breaths and slowing hearts and slow, _slow_ dripping, Tony let up a little a bit.  He sighed in consuming relief.  He settled his arms around Steve’s chest, still holding Steve’s hands but less forcefully.  Less to restrain him and more simply to hold him.  “This is fine.  It’s fine.”

“I don’t want to die alone,” Steve whimpered.  “Not again.”

Tony closed his eyes and held him firmer, this time just for comfort.  “You’re not alone.  And you’re not dying.  I’m going to get you through this.  The ice’ll get your fever down, and we’ll get you back to bed, and you’re going to be fine.  Okay?  Everything’s fine.”

“Tony?”  Tony didn’t know if Steve had lost track of things again, if he’d drifted suddenly and forgotten Tony was there, but whatever it was, he sounded lost and scared.  He gripped Tony’s arm and held it even tighter to his chest.  “Tony?  Don’t go.  Please don’t go…”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he swore again.  “Not anywhere, Steve.”  And he pressed a kiss into Steve’s hair before he could stop himself.

* * *

The ice bath did the trick.  As awful as it was, once Steve settled into it, it worked like a charm.  He passed out in Tony’s arms.  Tony kept him in the bath for quite some time until he felt it was likely Steve’s body temperature was down and the immediate threat was over.  Then he lifted Steve out, got him dry (which was something of a juggling act considering Steve was unconscious and about as physically capable and ungainly as a six-foot rag doll), bandaged the cuts on his face and hands (though they’d already stopped bleeding, so that hardly seemed necessary), and carried him back to his bedroom.  After laying him on the bed, Tony immediately took his temperature again and nearly passed out himself from relief.  _99.8._   “Thank God,” he whispered, closing his eyes against the burn of exhaustion.  “Thank God.”

“Check his blood toxicity,” JARVIS quietly advised.

Tony did.  “71%,” he reported.  He was punch-drunk and giddy.  “The serum’s working.”

“That is on target for what Doctor Banner predicted.  It has been nearly twelve hours since Captain Rogers was exposed.”

Tony glanced out the bedroom window and saw dawn breaking through the clouds, spreading golden illumination over the wet balcony and the city beyond.  _Dawn._  It was almost six in the morning.  He smiled like a loon.  They’d made it through the night somehow.  Inexplicably that felt like a monumental victory, like the worst was over.  The serum was working, and that was irrefutable proof that Steve was on the mend, and in a couple more hours, this’d all be a hazy nightmare receding into past.  Something they’d laugh about some day.  Something he could use to blackmail Steve or tease him or something he could use as leverage.  _“Remember that time I had to save you from jumping off Stark Tower because you were crazy off your ass?  Or remember when I had to rescue you from baking while literally intoxicated?  Or remember when…”_   He’d have the power to get Steve to do whatever he wanted for _forever._   The surge of might had him cackling gleefully.  “Worth it.”

“Sir?”

“Nothing.  Tell Bruce the good news.”

“I will.”

“Sleeping now.”  Tony barely had the energy to get out of the armor before he collapsed into Steve’s bed right next to him.

His slumber was deep and dreamless, which was pretty remarkable considering his tendency towards nightmares and insomnia.  Because it was so deep, it felt like he was completely unreachable.  Beyond being disturbed. 

Which wasn’t the case.  The world was moving.  A lot.  Earthquake?  Was in he Malibu?  No, no.  Something was shaking him.  Someone.  “Tony?  Tony…  Tony, wake up.  Wake up.”  Tony groaned, shrugging off what felt like hands.  Vaguely he knew he was cuddled up to something really nice, and he had no intention of moving. 

But the shaking got worse and worse, more persistent.  “Tony!  Wake up!  Wake up, please!”

“Go away,” he grumbled, nuzzling his face more into whatever it was that was so warm and soft.

_“Stark!”_

Yet again Tony lurched awake.  He sat up, nausea pouring over him at the sudden change, and looked around frantically.  For a second, he couldn’t remember where he was or what was happening, but then it clicked into place.  Steve’s room.  Steve was sick all last night.

And now Steve was right next to him.  Tony had been curled into Steve’s side, arm over Steve’s stomach, _face_ buried in Steve’s neck.  That was so shocking (and embarrassing) that he didn’t process much more for a second _._   “What’s wrong?” he finally asked, rolling up to his knees.

“Sorry.  I didn’t want to wake you, but I just can’t stand it anymore.”  Steve actually met his gaze.  Steve was actually _talking_ like a sane person.  He looked _worlds_ better.  He had a little color back in his cheeks, so that was good, but mostly it was his eyes.  That glaze of delirium and fever was gone, leaving _recognition_ and _cognizance_ and all that good stuff that heralded a brain actually functioning as opposed to one burning up with fever and running rampant with hallucinations.  Steve didn’t seem afraid of him either, so that was good.  No hard feelings or lingering nightmares from Iron Man forcing him to relieve going down into the ice.  That was a relief (of course, maybe he just didn’t remember it.  Tony wasn’t going to remind him if so).  There was, however, a touch of very justifiable confusion in his gaze.  And discomfort.  A whole lot of discomfort.  “My… my legs are cramping.”

Maybe it was childish, but Tony resisted the urge to balk at being awoken from the best sleep he’d had in a while because of a little muscle cramp.  “Okay?”

Steve shifted, grimacing.  He planted his heels into the mattress and tried to push himself up.  When he did, the sheet fell away from his lower half, and Tony could _see_ the cramp.  “Wow,” he whispered, horrified and intrigued at the same time.  Steve’s right calf muscle was knotted up in what looked like the mother of all Charley horses.  “Jesus.”

“Hurts pretty bad,” Steve ground out through gritted teeth.

“Yeah, no kidding,” Tony commented.  Muscle cramps could be excruciating.  He moved so that the afflicted leg was right in front of him.  “Can I?”

Steve hesitated a second but then nodded.  Tony was extremely careful as he touched Steve’s calf, brushing his thumbs over the smooth skin and light, fine hair before pressing them harder into the misbehaving muscle.  Steve groaned, tipping his head back and breathing harshly through his teeth.  The muscle felt like a rock in Tony’s hands as he massaged it.  “How long has this been going on?”

“An hour, maybe?”

Astonished and a bit annoyed, Tony’s gaze shot up to Steve.  “You laid here in bed with leg cramps like this for an hour, suffering in silence?”

Steve glared.  “Told you that I didn’t want to wake you.  You needed some sleep.  Besides, it wasn’t too bad until recently.”

Tony glanced at the clock.  It was almost ten in the morning.  He’d slept for four hours.  Hopefully Steve had slept for most of that period as well, and it seemed likely considering how much better he was, save for this.  Tony massaged for a bit until the muscle felt looser in his hands and Steve wasn’t breathing quite so hard.  Then he let go of Steve’s afflicted calf and reached for one of the bottles of Powerade on the cluttered mess of the nightstand.  “Drink,” he ordered, unscrewing the cap and handing it to Steve.  “Slowly.”

“I don’t feel nauseous anymore,” Steve argued, but he still took small, measured sips.

He also didn’t complain when Tony swiped his forehead with the thermometer again.  _99._   He’d definitely take that.  “Finger,” he demanded, taking the scanner.  Steve offered up his right index finger to be pricked.  _52%._ That was halfway.  “Hallelujah,” he whispered.

“What?”

“You’re getting better,” Tony declared, giving a little grin.

Steve nodded, smiling a little himself.  He handed Tony the now empty bottle.  “I feel a lot better.”

“Hurray for the super soldier serum.  It’s a miracle of modern medicine.”  Tony shrugged as he got off the bed and tossed the garbage into the can on the other side of the room near the desk.  He was giddy enough with the improvement to tease.  “Or not-so modern medicine, in your case.  A relic, really, from yesteryear.  The days of yore.”  Steve gave him a humorless frown.  “What?”

“Can you help me get up?  I want to walk on this a little, get it stretched out.  And…”  His grin turned sheepish.  “Use the facilities.”

“Sure.”  Tony pulled the sheets away and took Steve’s arm.  Steve winced as he swung his legs out.  That calf muscle still didn’t look quite right, and Steve seemed fairly unsteady as Tony helped him stand.  They took a moment there, Steve regaining his bearings and Tony keeping him upright as he did.  Tony looked Steve up and down, the fact that his wet hair had dried all funky and his skin was smooth and cool and he was still practically naked aside from his gray boxer briefs (Tony probably should have changed them last night after the ice bath so Steve didn’t have to sleep in wet underwear, but, yeah, that didn’t happen).  He averted his eyes.  _You’re a piece of work, Stark._ “Alright?”

“Yeah.”  Steve was a little breathless and a whole lot oblivious to the fact that Tony had been checking him out again.

Then he tried to take a step on that bad leg.  It buckled at the knee, and Steve went down, and Tony almost let him he was so damn surprised.  “Whoa!”

“Sorry.  Just…”  Steve gritted his teeth.  “Not sure what happened there.”

“You almost faceplanted.  You okay?”

“Yeah.  Dizzy.  Leg hurts.”

Tony regarded him dubiously, getting a clean pair of underwear from the pile.  “Can you do this by yourself?  Not that I’m all that interested in bearing witness to Captain America tinkling, but I’d rather permanently damage my childhood memories than see you break your neck.  Though I guess watching you pee would be one more thing to throw on the huge pile from last night marked ‘repress later’.”

Steve blushed hot with shame, and Tony realized he’d taken it too far.  He felt like a jerk for embarrassing him for things he probably didn’t remember all that clearly and had no control over.  “No, I can handle it.”  As if to prove his point, he took another step with the bad leg again, and this time it was fine.

Still not quite certain but figuring he’d done enough to batter Steve’s pride, Tony handed him the underwear and let him go.  Steve limped to the bathroom with greater speed and coordination.  “Call if you need me,” Tony offered.  Steve nodded and shut the door behind him.

The bedroom was quiet.  Tony gazed over the mess from last night, feeling weird and out of sorts like none of this was quite real.  “JARVIS?”

“I have spoken with Doctor Banner.  He is greatly encouraged by the latest results and suggests you have crested the worst of Captain Rogers’ symptoms.”

Tony rubbed his eyes.  “Yippity do.”

“Shall I order breakfast, sir?”

“Yeah.  Get a lot in case he’s hungry and feels up to eating.  And have the cleaning people come deal with the kitchen disaster.  And the broken door.  Make sure they know to stay out there.”

“Right away.”

“Guess I’ll…”  _Ugh._   “Tidy up.  Or something.”  With a tired sigh, he got to it, trying not to notice that he was itchy with stale sweat and his mouth tasted like swill.  Now that Steve wasn’t wandering around like mad man, maybe Tony could sneak up to his penthouse to take a shower and change once he got the soldier squared away.  That sounded so nice that it motivated him to move faster.  He went out to get some paper towels and other cleaning stuff, and as he was walking back from pantry alongside the kitchen, he paused at the sight of the broken door.  That made something ache inside him, the sight of the broken glass all over the floor and the rain that had blown in and wet the carpet stirring all sorts of memories from last night that were close to the surface.  He sighed, carefully walking closer to scoop up Steve’s shield up from where he’d tossed it last night.  Now that he considered it, this was the first time he’d really held it.  He slid his hand over the curved edge, finding it flawlessly smooth.  It was also surprisingly light.  He didn’t know why he expected anything else; vibranium was not a heavy metal, and his father wouldn’t have designed anything clunky or difficult to use.  It was also a testament to how heavy Steve hit with this thing and how much strength he put into throwing it around, that he was so powerful with something so seemingly insubstantial and simple.  All the tech Tony had at his disposal…  Steve did so much with hardly anything.

Back to all those contradictions between them.  It didn’t matter how close they got.  It didn’t matter how Steve had looked at him last night, delirious and desperate and terrified about losing him.  It wasn’t _meant_ to be.  These things that he was feeling, that he hoped Steve could feel…  They weren’t real and weren’t earned.  Their differences ran about as deep as differences could.  _It’ll never work._

Sighing, he went back to the bedroom and set the shield to the chair.  Then he cleaned up elsewhere.  Dirty laundry went in the hamper.  Trash went in the bag he’d brought in.  Clutter was organized.  Wet messes were wiped up.  He stripped the bed of the sheets; they were damp and gross with sweat.  Those went in the hamper too, and Tony found another set in the linen closet out by the second bathroom.  He dressed the bed in the new sheets, these navy blue.  It was moderately surprising he was doing all this.  Frankly, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d made his own bed, let alone someone else’s (probably never to the latter part).  He leaned back, pretty pleased with himself.

The water turned off in the bathroom.  That was good, because Tony was starting to get worried because it was taking Steve so long.  He rapped on the door, cracking it open.  “You need help?” he called.

“No,” came a slightly harried response.  “I’m…  I’m okay.”

“That’s not inspiring a lot of confidence,” Tony muttered.  He went over to the dresser where he had put a fresh pair of pajamas.  Behind him, he heard the bathroom door open.  Steve walked through, though walking might have been a generous term.  _Limping_ was probably a generous term.  His gait was completely stilted, like his muscles weren’t working right.  “Oh, hell,” Tony moaned, coming over.  “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Steve gasped.  He looked scared.  “My leg’s still cramping up pretty bad, but…”  He raised his left hand slowly.  The whole limb was shaking.  “I can’t bend my fingers.  I can’t…”

Gently Tony took his hand.  “You can’t…”  Sure enough, Steve’s fingers were utterly stiff.  Tony could _feel_ him trying, feel the muscles of his arm and hand straining, but aside from some unnatural twitches, the digits didn’t flex at all.  “Shit.”

“Didn’t…  Didn’t Doctor Banner say something yesterday about muscle issues?”

Bruce had said that.  Tony knew neurotoxins could cause all sorts of issues with skeletal muscles.  Weakness and spasms, rigidity and loss of control, possible paralysis.  A lot of these substances screwed around with the motor nerves, interfering with and inhibiting proper function.  Tony knew tetanus caused lockjaw and a whole bunch more really unpleasant muscle problems.  He ground his teeth together in anger.  _So much for him getting better._ “I guess we’re moving onto the next chapter of this shitty story.”

Steve winced.  “What do we do?”

Tony had no freaking idea.  “Let me…”  He sighed.  “Let’s get you dressed and back into bed.  You feel like eating?  I have food coming.”  Steve didn’t really answer, at least not beyond a little jerk of his head.  He looked absolutely crushed, like the realization this wasn’t over yet was seriously depressing him.  Tony could only imagine, since it was depressing him, too.  The two of them were silent as Tony worked to dress Steve.  It wasn’t easy at all, with his hand locked up and his leg so sore.  They did manage, and Tony helped Steve limp back into bed.  He settled him down, pulling the fresh sheets up and over his legs.  There was more going on here, more that was hurting that Steve wasn’t talking about.  Tony could tell.  He was squirming uncomfortably, the hand that couldn’t flex a dead weight in his lap, the other rhythmically clenching the sheets.  Christ, Tony had a feeling where this was going, and he didn’t want to go there.  Not at all.

“Sir, breakfast is here,” JARVIS announced.

That was opportune, because the silence was becoming ridiculously distressing for them both.  Tony sighed as he watched Steve quiver and twitch helplessly.  “You want me to get you anything else?”  Steve shook his head.  Again it was like a reflexive jerk, no smoothness to the action at all.  “Okay.  Be right back.”

The second he was out in the hallway, he leaned into the wall.  “Goddamn it,” he hissed, closing his eyes.  “JARVIS–”

“There is very little to be done,” the AI softly, glumly declared.  “Muscle spasms and rigidity are treated with relaxants, which will have little to no effect on Captain Rogers.”

Tony had already figured that.  “Guess there’s no reason to push to take him to SHIELD this time at least.”  JARVIS was silent about that.  “What about Bruce?”

“He has booked an early flight from New Delhi, so he has already retired for the day.  He told me that you should feel free to wake him.”

“Is there anything he can do?”

Hesitant, JARVIS paused a moment.  “Unlikely.”

“Then no.  We’re just in for a day from hell,” Tony surmised.

“So far Doctor Banner’s projections have held true, which would suggest that Captain Rogers will reach 25% or less toxicity around five o’clock this afternoon.  That will mark twenty-four hours post-exposure.  At this point, the worst of it should be over.”

“Oh, that’s comforting,” Tony groused.  He pushed himself off the wall and went to doors of the suite, where the cart full of breakfast foods was waiting.  “Only six or seven hours of fun ahead.”

“I would advocate for distractions,” JARVIS suggested as Tony grabbed some plates and silverware from the kitchen.  He also took some water bottles and more Powerade from the fridge.  “Pain becomes worse when it is psychologically overwhelming.  Perhaps finding a television show or movie that Captain Rogers would enjoy or some calming music–”

“I know what a distraction is,” Tony snapped, “and I know how pain works.”

“You must be advised, sir, if you will not take him to SHIELD.”

“You know I can’t.”

“Then you must keep a very careful eye on his breathing.  Doctor Banner made brief mention of this yesterday, but it has now become far more relevant.  If the neurotoxin is interfering with normal striatal muscle function, there is a chance it will impede his diaphragm from adequate performance.”  Tony stopped pushing the breakfast cart to close his eyes.  _God.  Goddamn it.  I need to take him to SHIELD._   “Considering how quickly the neurotoxin is moving through his system, this could happen very rapidly, and if it does, he might asphyxiate in a matter of minutes.”

Tony went cold.  “Well, that sucks.”

“At the moment, only his extremities seem affected, but it may not stay that way.”

“Of course not.  Why change our shitty luck now?”

“I would suggest you go soon to the infirmary and retrieve an intubation kit.”  That somehow made this seem very real, very dangerous, and very unavoidable.  “I will send literature to your phone on how to perform the procedure.  It is difficult to do and should not be attempted without training.”

JARVIS’ not so subtle way of telling him he wasn’t qualified to handle this was pretty aggravating and freaking spot-on.  “Yeah, well, train me, I guess.”

“Sir–”

“Don’t, JARVIS,” he snapped, knowing exactly what the AI was going to advise.  _Again._ It was the same damn thing he was thinking, too.  “You know he’ll say no, and I’m not in the mood to argue about it.  Let’s just…  It won’t come to that.”

“As you say, sir.”

Tony pushed the cart to the bedroom door.  He wasn’t going to think about that right now, even if he knew JARVIS was right.  Instead he picked up a tray full of covered plates and carried it into the bedroom.  Steve was thankfully exactly where Tony had left him, though now it didn’t seem likely that he could go anywhere.  And he was obviously getting more and more miserable.  His left hand was still uselessly laying in his lap.  His right was trembling.  Tony could see him wriggling his toes under the sheets.  He wasn’t sure what that was about.  Maybe him trying to flex muscles and keep things from locking up?  “Got some food here,” he announced like a moron as he came to the bed.

Steve unclenched his right hand from the sheets.  “Not that hungry.”

“You should eat something and definitely drink more, especially after last night.”  Tony brought the tray over and set it on the bed.  Lifting up the plate covers, he found scrambled eggs, bacon, pancakes, waffles, and fruits.  “What do you want?”

Steve grimaced, looking over the array.  “Nothing.”

Tony exhaled slowly, long-suffering and trying not to get irritated.  “So now we’re going to do this?  You’re going to refuse to eat like a child?”

Steve’s glare was cutting.  “I can’t damn well eat like this, can I?”  His tone was equal parts upset and petulant.

Admitting Steve’s motor skills were rapidly going downhill was too much.  “Sure, you can.”  Tony went about filling a plate for him, starting with some eggs and toast with a little applesauce.  He stayed away from the greasy stuff, not sure how settled Steve’s stomach really was and not wanting anything remotely close to a repeat of last night.  He cut one of the pancakes up.  Then he set the plate carefully on Steve’s lap.

Steve’s grimace turned into a frown of fear and frustration.  He tried to bend his fingers on his left hand again, but that was a no-go.  They only twitched and trembled.  Tony couldn’t help but be horrified for him, making a point not to stare so as not to embarrass him further (although what there was for Steve to be embarrassed about, Tony didn’t know.  This wasn’t Steve’s fault, wasn’t in his control, and frankly?  Dignity had been flushed down the toilet with last night’s dinner).  Steve gave up with his left hand and tried with his right.  He had better luck there (marginally).  He was able to grip the fork, but his arm was shaking so bad that using it was still nigh impossible.  After a few seconds of the food falling off before it got anywhere near his mouth, he set the utensil down with a short sigh.

Being stripped of your independence was miserable.  “If you want to just use your fingers, I don’t mind,” Tony declared as he poured himself a cup of coffee from the carafe on the cart.  Thank God for coffee.  And thank God JARVIS had had the foresight to order straws.  Tony popped one into a bottle of Powerade.

“Yeah, well, I mind,” Steve grumbled.  “This is humiliating.”

“Doesn’t need to be,” Tony offered softly, though he was a million percent certain he’d feel just as awful were their roles reversed.  “May I?”

Steve watched with big eyes as Tony sat on the bed next to him.  Tony took the plate and the fork, speared a little bit of pancake, and ( _I can’t believe I’m doing this_ ) lifted it toward Steve’s mouth.  Steve was wary at first, clearly still struggling with his embarrassment, but Tony kept his face open and his eyes earnest and everything calm and nonthreatening.  It was surprisingly easy to do that.  The urge to tease didn’t really manifest itself like it usually did.  Not when Steve was this low and vulnerable.

And Steve seemed to be holding his breath, waiting for Tony to give him a hard time.  When it didn’t happen, he relaxed as much as his locked-up muscles would let him, and opened his mouth.  Tony fed him the piece of pancake.  It was awkward, sure, but not as awkward as it could be.  He got more pancake and did it again.  Steve chewed appreciatively and swallowed.  “Tastes good.”

“Does it?”  Tony tried a bit himself, hardly even realizing he was using the same fork until after the deed was done.  That, too, seemed weirdly intimate, and he caught Steve staring.  Steve went red and looked away, and Tony did, too, and the silence turned itchy and uncomfortable again.  Tony went back to feeding Steve just to get it over with.  For a while, they went on with talking, but when he went for the scrambled eggs, Steve shook his head.  “No?”

“Had, uh…”  Steve winced.  “Some weird nightmares last night.  About eggs?”

Tony laughed.  “I know.”  Steve burned a brighter red again.  “Hey, it’s okay.”

“Don’t remember much of it,” Steve admitted.  “Just…”  His eyes settled on Tony, open and filled with something Tony couldn’t quite name but loved seeing.  Something appreciative and affectionate.  Something warm.  It was related to that fear from the night before, that fear of losing Tony.  Tony basked in that just a little, the warmth of Steve’s eyes, and smiled.  Steve smiled, too.

But just like that, the smile _shattered._   Steve twisted all the sudden, nearly causing Tony to drop the plate, and screamed.  “Holy shit!” Tony gasped, clambering off the bed, setting the food back on the tray, and snatching the whole thing before it ended up all over the floor.  Steve was kicking at the sheets, face locked in an agonized wince, crying desperately.  Tony yanked the sheets away before Steve ripped them, and when his legs were unveiled…  “Oh, holy _shit._ ”

Tony could see the cramps.  He could see the muscles contracting and straining.  The muscles of his feet, of his calves, of his thighs…  Even through the fabric of his pajama pants, Tony could detect the ugly, unnatural bulge of them as they contorted.  Steve bit down on his next scream, shivering like mad again, eyes tight with pain.  He squirmed desperately, but with his muscles all twisted up, there wasn’t much he could do.  There wasn’t much Tony could do, either.  Helpless, he watched him struggle for what felt like a long time, reeling with the fact that now _this_ was happening.

Then he snapped out of it and raced back to the bedside.  “I’m taking you to SHIELD.”

Steve was with it enough to force open eyes he’d squeezed shut.  They were wild with terror and pain.  “No,” he gasped.  “No!”

“Goddamn it, Steve, enough!  I put up with it last night, but this is getting ridiculous!  You need a doctor!”

Steve choked on a cry, shaking his head in frenetic jerks.  “No.  No, they can’t do anything.”  Once more it was hard for him to get that out, but _not_ going to SHIELD was apparently more important than sparing himself the pain and effort.  Or, you know, _getting help._   “They can’t do anything!  I want to stay here!  I can…”  His voice escalated into a pathetic whimper.  “I can handle it.”

“You don’t have to do this!  Not for me!  You think I give a rat’s ass if Fury rips me a new one for causing this mess?  I’m Tony Stark.  What the hell are they gonna do to me?”  He shook his head, battling sudden stinging in his eyes as something occurred to him.  He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it before.  Sure, he and Steve disagreed a lot, and Steve hadn’t been on board at all with his screwing around with the alien egg, but underneath all the frowning and glaring and occasional lecturing, Steve was a decent person.  _A good man._   He’d protect Tony, even from a reprimand from SHIELD.  And he was a self-sacrificing _idiot._ “I know I screwed up bad, Steve.  I know it.  So who’s to say I don’t deserve whatever SHIELD tries to do to me, anyway?  If that’s what you’re worried about, _stop._ ”

“No!” Steve gasped.  “I mean, yeah, but that’s not–”  He couldn’t keep talking.  The pain was too much.

Tony stumbled closer, grasping Steve’s shoulder.  “What can I do?”

Steve moaned.  “Just don’t take me to SHIELD, okay?  Sorry, Tony.  Sorry!  Just–”

“Alright,” Tony comforted, summoning equanimity from somewhere.  There was no point in taking him to SHIELD, anyway.  Steve was right about that.  So was JARVIS.  Drugs wouldn’t make a difference, so aside from monitoring him in setting more equipped for an emergency, the doctors there couldn’t do anything Tony couldn’t do.  “Alright.  I need you to sit tight, though.  I have to run and get something.”

Steve didn’t seem pleased with him going, but he realized it was tied to Tony’s agreeing to keep him here, so he nodded.  Tony bolted out of the bedroom, pushing the cart of barely eaten breakfast stuffs to the kitchen and tearing out of the suite and down to the elevators again.  “I deserve a freaking medal,” he hissed as he took the lift back down to the infirmary.  _Again._   Once there, JARVIS directed him to the intubation kits.  The AI reminded him again that it would be difficult to handle this situation by himself should it arise, but Tony wasn’t willing to go against Steve’s wishes for a what-if.  Not yet, anyway.  Besides, he had another set of hands in JARVIS (through Iron Man, anyway) and Bruce would be there late tonight or early tomorrow morning.  He could make it until then.

Still, he wasn’t going to be unprepared.  In addition to the kit, he took a small oxygen tank and a portable ventilator, as well as an AED.  He loaded all that onto a cart he found in the infirmary’s storage room, and back up to Steve he went, swearing to JARVIS and himself all the way that he was not going to need any of it.

Steve was still in bed.  He cracked open his eyes to watery slits when Tony pushed the cart through the door. “What’s all that?” he asked.

“Fun stuff,” Tony responded, fairly winded, “in case you stop breathing.”

“Why would I…”  Steve’s eyes clouded with misery.  “Won’t happen!”

“Yeah.  Let’s pray this awful shit keeps to your legs and arms and stays away from anything more vital.”  Tony came closer after securing his haul out of the way but not so far as to be inaccessible.  “Or that the serum kicks its ass before it gets worse.”

Steve moaned, shifting miserably.  “I’ll – I’ll be okay,” he whimpered, and that was about the most pathetic and least convincing pledge Tony had ever heard.

Tony sighed, grabbing the scanner and pulling Steve’s left arm as much as he could from where it was wrapped around his stomach.  At first he thought Steve was fighting him, but it wasn’t that.  His goddamn arm was frozen in place, the muscles as hard and unyielding as rock.  “Jesus,” Tony griped.  “I am officially never playing around with something I don’t understand ever, _ever_ again.”

Steve gave a dry grin while Tony came around from the other direction to prick his finger.  “You’re full of crap, Stark,” he mumbled weakly.  “Wouldn’t be you if you didn’t.”

Tony had to admit that was true.  He looked down at the scanner and found Steve’s blood toxicity was reduced to 47%.  Still about halfway.  They were in for a long, _long_ day.  He reached for the bottle of Powerade and held the straw to Steve’s lips.  Steve drank in big gulps, clearly desperate for something to feel good.  The second Tony took the bottle away, he was leaning back into the pillows, gasping, twisting his legs in the sheets.  “Easy,” Tony said.  “How bad is the pain?”  Steve didn’t answer, which in and of itself _was_ an answer.  “Come on.  On a scale from one to ten, how bad?”

“Four,” Steve hissed through clenched teeth.

“Yeah, now you’re the one who’s full of crap.”  It didn’t mean anything, anyway.  If Steve’s level of pain was at a one or a ten, there was no drug, no relief, Tony could give him to make it better.  They were just going to have to tough it out.  “What do you want to watch?”

Steve blinked, getting better control of his breathing as the latest spasm eased.  “Wh-what?”

“On TV.”  Tony stood and pressed the touch pad near the bed, and the television descended from a nearly invisible slot in the ceiling.  It was nothing more than a thin pane of glass, nearly invisible and very expensive.  Steve stared in utter confusion.  “Don’t tell me you didn’t know it did that.”

“N-no.  JARVIS told me.  I just never…”

“Never watched TV in bed.  You’re missing out, Cap.”  Tony sat in his chair from before, pulling it closer to the bed again so that he was in easy reach of Steve.  He took the remote with him and started browsing the Tower’s entertainment database.  “It’s fun alone but kinda depressing sometimes.  Better with someone else, though preferably not like this.  Preferably as a precursor or post, uh, cursor – is that even a thing? – to the horizontal tango.”

Steve blinked again.  “Wouldn’t know.”

Once again, it was seriously inappropriate to be talking about this, but Tony couldn’t stop himself from asking.  He was too curious, and Steve had left open a door, intentionally or not.  “About TV or the horizontal tango?”

“Wouldn’t know.”

That was irritatingly cryptic.  Tony really couldn’t help it.  At least it was a distraction, right?  “You mean you’ve never…  Not with _anyone?_ ”

He didn’t mean to sound so incredulous, but damn it, it was kind of unheard nowadays for a man in his mid to late twenties not to have had sex.  Plus Steve was…  Well, Steve was Captain America.  It seemed absolutely inconceivable that he hadn’t slept with _someone._   “I mean, you mentioned losing your chances with whoever you lost your chances with…”  Tony knew damn well who that was.  Howard had talked nonstop about Peggy Carter.  Still, he figured mentioning Steve’s broken heart right now when his legs seemed intent on bending backwards until they broke themselves was in pretty poor taste.  “But there hasn’t been anyone else?  No one back in Brooklyn?  No one since the big thaw?”  God, he was fishing and fishing hard.  He should be ashamed of himself.

And Steve’s glare was answer enough.  “You try losing everyone you know and love and then see how interested you are in hooking up.”

“Bravo for using the correct parlance at least.”

“Go to hell,” Steve muttered.

Any sort of understanding between them just died.  Tony should have known better than to bring something like this up while Steve was sick (and sick because of him).  It was like poking an angry dog, and that wasn’t what he wanted.  “I’m not trying to judge you or make fun of you.  I was just…”  _Hoping maybe you’d look twice at me.  Hoping you’d want to do more than just hook up.  Hoping you’d think of me the way you thought of her._   “…curious.”  He looked away.

Steve grimaced, turning away as well, at least as much as he could.  The silence that came was awful.  Tony had stepped in it big, and he knew it, and he could hear Steve struggling his way through more pain.  He was about to make some excuse to leave for a moment to gather himself at least and figure out how to apologize, but Steve suddenly spoke.  “I was in the army.  I know about – about having a good time when you can because tomorrow or the day after that or the one after that could be your last.  And I know nowadays it’s okay to – to share yourself without commitment.”

Tony chanced looking at him again, but Steve was staring at the wall across the way.  He sighed.  “But I don’t want that.  I don’t want some good times with no strings attached.  I didn’t want it then, and I don’t want it now.  Maybe… maybe the guy who wanted the farm and the family and the quiet life after the war went down in the ice, but…”  Steve quirked a little smile.  “I still want someone who understands me, who understands the life I live.  Who wants to share in that.”

That gave Tony pause.  _I’m sharing in it now._ It hurt in a way, to hear Steve say these things, say them and not _see_ Tony right in front of him.  That aching need inside struggled to be free, but he couldn’t let it be.  Not now.  Probably not ever.  “Well,” he said, donning what he hoped was a charming, nonchalant smile, “a fling every now and then isn’t bad.”  He said that with such a pathetically hopeful note in his voice, as if he’d take a fling with Steve over nothing.  As if he was inviting him to have one without actually asking.  At least it sounded that way to him.  He sighed, pissed off at himself for being such a damn love-struck moron, hating how he could feel the weight of Steve’s stare.  “Then again, a life full of hook-ups kinda sucks.  Take it from me.”  He frowned.  “So what the hell do I know?”

The silence came back again.  Tony hated it, hated how every time he felt closer to Steve, reality set in.  Steve was Captain America.  Steve was from the 40s.  Steve didn’t swing that way and definitely wouldn’t swing _his_ way even if he was interested in a same-sex relationship.  So it was stupid to harbor these feelings and desires and _anything_ at all basically, because it was never going to happen and Tony had faced enough disappointment already in his life.

“Something funny.”

Tony hauled himself unhappily from his thoughts.  “What’s funny?”

“What I want to watch.  Something funny.”  Despite the pain he was in, Steve smiled faintly.  Disarmingly.  “Still trust you to pick it, even after all this.”

The warmth that brought on was ludicrous, but Tony immediately took it.  _Whole-heartedly._   “I think I know something.  You’ve seen _Star Wars,_ right?”

Steve’s nod was stiff.  “Yeah.”

“Well, if you don’t find _Spaceballs_ funny, you’re not human.  J?”

A couple minutes later, they were watching the movie.  Tony was trying to pay attention, trying to talk about it and explain the stuff Steve might not get, trying his damnedest to keep Steve interested.  To his credit, Steve was trying, too, and trying hard.  He was sitting up more, watching the TV with as much concentration as he could manage.  It wasn’t much.  As thirty minutes turned into an hour, Tony lost what little investment he had.  Steve was whimpering with almost every breath now.  He’d been clenching down hard on any sound whatsoever, but Tony could tell he was in agony and running out of the energy to hide it.  The muscle spasms seemed almost constant, afflicting different parts of his body but never completely abating.  It was brutal to observe.  Tony could practically sense them work their way over Steve’s hapless form from the way Steve’s breathing shortened or his body shifted or how he grabbed the sheets harder.   Tony was working his hardest to seem normal and unbothered, but it was impossible.  He realized this wasn’t going to work.  Keeping up the charade of everything being okay was stupid.  It _wasn’t_ okay, and this wasn’t keeping either of them distracted.  “What about some music?”

Steve wiped at his cheeks with his right hand.  “Huh?”

“Music.  Good therapy.  What do you want to listen to?”

Speaking, let alone deciding anything, seemed to be way beyond Steve’s capabilities right now.  He choked down a garbled moan, slapping his right hand to his right thigh and throwing his head back.  Tony stood and reached over to feel his leg.  Those serum-enhanced muscles seemed intent upon torturing their owner.  His thigh felt like it was made of stone.  Tony swallowed through a tight throat, wondering how much strain and pressure Steve’s tendons and bones could withstand.  “Pink Floyd?  You tried them?  Led Zeppelin.  ACDC.  You gotta start with the classics.”

A sob burst through Steve’s lips.  “I can’t…”

Mindlessly Tony set to massaging Steve’s leg, pressing his fingers into the cramping muscle to try and reduce the pain.  And mindlessly he told JARVIS, “Rock classics seems too rough right now anyway.  Maybe actual classical?  Ravel?  Mozart?  Dvorák.”

“New World Symphony” started playing.  For a second, the famous, pretty melody of the Largo movement was nothing but comforting.  Steve seemed to be listening, relaxing slightly into the bed, Tony’s capable hands rubbing his thigh.  He licked his lips, letting his eyes slip shut.  “Didn’t – didn’t know you…  You liked…”

“The symphony?” Tony tried to be affronted, but it was hard when he was this worried.  “What sort of uncultured swine do you think I am, Rogers?  Just because I like heavy metal and rock doesn’t mean I wasn’t forced to learn about a snooze-fest like this.  Or that I can’t appreciate it.”  He kept his tone light and joking, but it wasn’t doing much good.  He could feel the muscle spasm again under his fingers, and Steve openly sobbed.  Tony could only imagine how painful this was.  Everyone knew what a muscle cramp felt like; for something so common and typically innocuous, they could be excruciating.  This seemed like a million times that, random attacks all over his arms and legs coming one after the other until he could hardly breathe.  Steve was sinking fast into total anguish, into that place where the pain started overwhelming you and terror compounded on the hurt and the hurt made the fear sharper and more consuming and pretty soon everything was feeding into everything else in some vicious cycle.  Tony knew that merry-go-round from hell all too well.  “We’re going to get you through this.”  He massaged harder, trying to get the muscle to unknot.  “I’ll get you through it.”

Steve didn’t answer.  He just laid there, staring at the ceiling, silently crying.  Tony never fathomed he’d see Captain America like this, reduced to weeping in pain.  He never fathomed how much it’d hurt.  It felt wrong, like it wasn’t his place to be here.  The music played on, and Tony switched to Steve’s other leg, to his calf when the cramp moved there.  “Just hang on.  It’s going to be okay.  Hang on.”

There was no choice but to.  Long minutes escaped with Tony rubbing and murmuring solace as Steve quaked and writhed through the pain.  Somewhere during all that, Tony tested his blood again.  _41%._   “We’re getting there,” he whispered around a sigh, taking Steve’s hand in his own, careful of the bandages from where he’d cut himself last night.  He went to work on the muscles there, even targeting some acupressure points even though he didn’t put a whole lot of stock in the science.  He’d try anything to get Steve’s mind off the pain.

After a bit, it seemed to work, and Steve was calmer.  Tony had no idea if the improvement was from his ministrations or simply a lull in the torture, but he took it.  He had Steve drinking more of the sports drink, wondering if an electrolyte imbalance was exacerbating the problem (he doubted it, but again he was willing to do anything).  Then he took the moment to go and find some hot packs in the supplies he brought up.  Out in the kitchen, he chugged down the now icy coffee from the breakfast cart in between shoveling in cold scrambled eggs.  They tasted like slimy shit, and his stomach was pretty twisted up, but he was hungry and he knew he needed to eat.  It was almost lunchtime.  After a couple forkfuls, he took a second to breathe.  “J?”

“You are doing everything that can be done, sir,” the AI comforted.

It didn’t feel like nearly enough.  He sighed, pushing the food away and grabbing the pile of packs.  Then it was back toward the bedroom.  When he passed through the living room, though, he spotted a few books on the table.  That was the one thing Steve had done to the suite to make it his.  The huge bookcase next to the couches was chocked full of neatly organized books, everything from compendiums of history to books on World War II to science texts to recent works of fiction.  He was clearly in the middle of a few of them.  Tony picked through the books and found Steve had just started reading _I, Robot._   Taking that in hand, he went back to the bedroom.

Steve had twisted into his side.  He was shaking so hard the bed seemed to be moving with him, which was saying something considering how big the bed was.  Tony came over and cracked the hot packs to activate the chemicals inside.  “Here,” he offered, and he placed the packs against Steve’s legs.  “See if this helps, okay?”

Steve didn’t seem too inclined to do much of anything.  He was shuddering, breathing in uneven gasps, face red and buried into the pillows.  Tony winced, chancing a hand to Steve’s hip.  Christ, he could feel the muscles there knotting up, too.  It was all through his lower back.  _It’s moving northward._   That wasn’t good.  He didn’t say anything to Steve, though, not that he needed to.  Steve had probably realized it anyway.  Afraid, Tony pressed more hot packs there under the cotton of Steve’s shirt.  “Thought maybe I’d read for a while?  How does that sound?”

Steve didn’t seem like he could process that at first.  “You want to what?”

Tony came around the other side and climbed onto the bed.  He himself was stiff and aching with all the craziness of the last twelve hours, so it wasn’t at all graceful, but he got himself up to Steve’s side.  He showed him the book cover.  “Good choice.  You like it?”

Steve closed his eyes.  He was having trouble talking.  “’s good.  Read – read some when they came out.  Liked it.  Liked stuff like that.”

Tony opened the story.  “You know, they made movies from these.  You could just watch them.”

“Rather read.  L-like reading.”

“I can tell.”  For some reason, the image of Steve sitting on that couch out there, tearing through book after book in an attempt to catch up on seventy years, was kind of endearing.  So was the thought that Steve liked science fiction.  “How fast can you read anyway?”

“Why?”

“For science.”  _And to keep you distracted._   “What, like a thousand words a minute?”

Steve groaned.  “Maybe.”

“Probably more than that.  You would have been handy in college, Cap.  But, alas, you were sleeping with the glaciers.  And, alas, I can only read at slightly superhuman speeds, so this should take a while.  And I don’t do voices.”  Steve cracked a weary smile at that.  Tony smiled, too, and opened up the book.  “Alright, let’s do this.”

Against all odds, _this_ worked pretty well.  At first it was odd hearing only his voice in the bedroom, but as he read a few pages into it, he got used to it, got into it even, throwing more theatrics into his performance.  Steve seemed to appreciate that.  He was still trembling but otherwise motionless as the rigidity and spasms worked him over in literal fits and spurts.  He was listening, though.  Tony could tell.  For quite a while, he read, reaching over occasionally to adjust the hot packs or wipe the sweat from Steve’s face with one of the washcloths from last night.  They were doing okay.  This was fine.  Steve even started to doze, and Tony found himself hoping beyond hope that he’d fall asleep and wake up on the other side of this misery.

He didn’t.  After a quiet, peaceful hour passed in the afternoon, he started squirming and stiffening again.  Tony watched the misery creeping up on them with dread and mounting frustration.  He checked Steve’s blood toxicity.  It was at 32%.  They were on the downward slide of this nightmare, but apparently hell wasn’t letting them go without a fight.

Steve whined through clenched teeth, interrupting a particularly boring section of the book.  Tony sighed shakily.  This had been happening more and more the last twenty minutes or so, that he’d have to stop while Steve breathed through the pain.  The periods of relief were getting shorter and less numerous.  “You want to stop?” he asked.

Steve didn’t answer.  He squeezed his eyes shut, kicking weakly, twisting onto his other side, tearing the sheets in his curled fist.  His movements were all stunted and sharp yet, completely lacking the fluid grace Tony normally associated with him.  _Goddamn it,_ Tony thought.  It was like watching a storm coming or watching one of his inventions slowly start to go up in flames.  The pain was ramping up and up, and Steve was sinking down, and Tony was _still_ so damn helpless.

 _No._   He closed the book and set it to the other side of the bed.  Then he took Steve’s hands in his own.  The left was improved; his fingers weren’t so rigid now, though they were still shaking and clammy with sweat.  “Hold my hand,” Tony ordered.  “Come on.”

Thin streams of tears were leaking from Steve’s eyes.  He was squeezing them shut hard, creasing the skin around them and furrowing his brow.  Still he shook his head, and his grip was limp.  “Hold onto me, Steve.”  Tony knew there was something to be said for physical contact when one was suffering.  Senses narrowed down to nothing, but touch somehow _felt_ like more, like an anchor.  “Go ahead.  Squeeze if you want.”

“Hurt you,” he gasped.  “I’ll hurt you!”

Tony was prepared to argue, but that was maybe foolhardy and he’d done enough needlessly reckless things recently.  Steve seemed weak, but the last thing he wanted to do was burden him with worry about crushing Tony’s fingers.  Thankfully the solution was literally right in front of him, dark against the far wall of the bedroom where Tony had left it last night.  He got off the bed, raced over to the suit, and donned Iron Man’s gauntlet.  Maybe that was a little cold and metallic for human contact, but it’d work.  He came right back to Steve’s side and offered up his gloved hand.  “There.  Squeeze as hard as you want.”

“St-Stark,” Steve whimpered.  He writhed more violently now.  Tony could practically see the spasms getting worse, muscles locking in his legs and arms and chest and back.  He was arching involuntarily and fighting so hard against it.  Every inch of his body was inflexible and hard.  It was like some invisible force was tormenting him, twisting him and maligning him.

And Steve still wouldn’t hold his hand.  Tony shook his head, leaning over Steve to look in his eyes.  “Steve, it’s alright.  Hang onto me.  You’re not going to hurt me.”  Frantically, Steve shook his head.  Tony didn’t know if it was against the pain or what he’d said.  He shivered through what he hoped would be a steadying breath.  “You ever been tortured before?”  Steve’s eyes opened.  Weakly he shook his head again.  “Well, I have.  And it hurts like nothing else.  But you know what?  It’s not the pain that’s your enemy.  It’s the fear.  The pain you can handle if you’re not afraid of it.  So squeeze my hand.  Cry if you want.  _Scream_ if you want.  Do whatever you have to do to get through it, okay?  I’m here, and you’re not alone, and you’re going to be okay.  I swear to you.  Trust me.”

Suddenly Steve’s eyes were firm, clear, focused on Tony.  “I trust you,” he whispered.  “I trust you!”  Then his hand clutched Iron Man’s glove.  His fingers dug in until they were pressing more dents into the plating, and he threw his head back.  Tony winced as he screamed, as he cried and struggled and held him so tightly it hurt.  Never once, though, did either of them let go.

* * *

The afternoon went on for forever.  By the time the sun went down and evening blanketed the city, the both of them were completely spent.  It was only through sheer willpower that Tony was still functioning.  The long hours he’d spent helping Steve through the muscle spasms had drained him dry.  He was absolutely exhausted, and that was saying something for a man who could work for thirty-six hours straight without even feeling the edge of weariness prodding at him.  Tinkering or coding or obsessing over something he was designing didn’t have the emotional fatigue this had had, though.  Thus, when Tony had checked Steve’s blood toxicity a little while ago and found it at 18%, when the rigidity had finally faded from Steve’s muscles, when a weary sob slipped through Steve’s lips and he at long last relaxed against the bed…  Well, it really felt like a miracle.

Now Tony was lying next to Steve as the other man dozed.  Since the worst of the convulsions faded an hour ago, Steve had been drifting, awake at times and asleep at others.  He looked better again, the gallons of sweat pouring off of him lessened and the color returning to his cheeks.  His body was soft and pliant.  Tony had slipped his arm free of Iron Man’s gauntlet, and he had one arm pillowed under his head and the other around Steve’s shoulders.  He wasn’t sure when during the last miserable hours he’d done that, but he didn’t care.  This was nice, and he felt like sleeping too, like simply letting go and getting some well-earned rest.  After keeping a constant vigil all afternoon and getting Steve through hours of excruciating misery, he damn well deserved it.

Before he could entirely abandon the fading adrenaline from the day and totally slip under, he felt and heard Steve take a deeper breath from beside him.  He’d become well-learned in just the span of twenty-four hours on how to read Steve’s body language.  Attuned to it, really.  His eyes popped open to see Steve staring blearily at him.  “You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Steve murmured.  “Feel weird.”

“Weird good or weird bad?”

“Sore.  Really achy.  But okay.”  That didn’t seem weird at all; in fact, it made perfect sense considering the chaotic hellfire his body had just endured for hours.  He blushed.  “I, uh…  Have to…”

Tony supposed that made sense considering all the Powerade and water he’d made Steve drink throughout the day.  He was so freaking tired that the thought of getting Steve up and to the bathroom seemed impossible.  He rolled out of bed with a groan all the same.  “Let’s get you up.”

It was (probably unsurprisingly) difficult to do that.  Steve was pretty worn out, wincing and whining as Tony pulled him upright and to his feet.  Somewhere in the back of his mind he thought it was a little strange that Steve was so limp and uncoordinated, but the guy had spent the last twenty-four hours at the whims of this toxin (and the last twelve hours or so having his nerves and muscles go completely haywire), so he wrote it off and hauled Steve up against him.  Into the bathroom they went.  He didn’t even bother asking if Steve could handle it himself because it was pretty obvious he couldn’t.  Tony shuffled him, feet dragging and steps seriously uneven, to the toilet.  “I’ll just…  Okay, you’re not waiting.”

Steve wasn’t, grabbing at those same gray boxer briefs and fumbling with them without much delay.  Tony moved away fast and looked away faster, swallowing thickly and praying Steve was too out of it to notice his blush.  “Sorry,” Steve mumbled, “but… when you gotta go, you gotta go?”  He laughed.

Tony didn’t know what could be funny.  When Steve was done, he waited until he was pretty sure Steve was back in his underwear.  Then he risked a glance and saw all was well.  Flushing the toilet, he realized both he and Steve reeked of stale sweat and sickness.  “You want to wash up?  I’ll get you in the shower.”

Steve smiled dopily as Tony lowered the toilet lid and eased him down to sit on it.  “Sounds like the bee’s knees.”

“Christ, if you start in talking all old-timey on me…”  Tony touched the pad next to the shower stall and turned the water on fairly hot.  He looked down at his rumpled clothes, two days ripe.  He didn’t have anything here to wear, but he could borrow Steve’s stuff.  Then it occurred to him that maybe it wasn’t entirely okay to strip down to his underwear and get into the shower with Rogers, but it was pretty fantastically obvious that Steve wasn’t going to be able to wash himself.  And, frankly, he felt disgusting.  “Stay,” he ordered Steve.

Steve gave him a sloppy salute.  “Sir, yes, sir.”

Tony rolled his eyes and went back out into the bedroom.  He was running on empty, on empty reserves even, but he gathered up another set of clean pajamas for Steve and found a pair of sweats that looked on the smaller side for him.  Pulling out Steve’s dresser drawers, he located an entire selection of gray, white, or navy blue boxer briefs.  It was quite possibly the most boring array of underwear in the history of underwear, and every pair was conscientiously rolled up and neatly organized.  Tony rolled his eyes again and grabbed two pairs, one for him and one for Steve.

Back in the bathroom, Steve was singing.  _Singing._   And it was seriously off-key.  It seemed the super soldier serum had made every part of Steve perfect except for pitch.  Tony had no idea what the song was even.  He didn’t recognize the language, but it sounded… Irish?  He supposed that made sense.  The second Steve spotted him coming back into the bathroom, he offered what could only be described as a drunken smile.  “Wanna sing along?”

“Are you…”  _Inebriated.  Intoxicated._ Tony shook his head.  _Duh._   “It’s gotta be the neurotoxin.”

“Huh?”

“You seem stoned.  Or drunk.  Or I don’t know what.  Slap-happy?”

Steve’s brow furrowed in confusion.  “Can’t get drunk.”

Tony set all the stuff down on the rack next to the shower and grabbed some towels.  He put those there too and went to the toilet where Steve was slumped.  “Either that or this is some sort of endorphin rush.  Like your body’s trying to make it up to you and overcompensating or something.”  He pulled the bandages off from the night before.  The tape stuck to his skin, which required more yanking.

“Ouch,” Steve whined, looking at the cuts on his hands as Tony worked the gauze away from the few on his face.  “When did that happen?”

“Last night.  You don’t remember breaking the door to the balcony?”

Steve squinted.  He probably didn’t.  Apparently they were back to crazy-and-confused-off-his-ass Cap again.  That was alright.  It was better than everything else they’d faced over the last twenty-four hours.  “No?”

“Well, you broke it.  At least you had the sense not to break the one in the bedroom.”

“Sorry.”  Then he laughed again.  “Whoops.  I guess I wanted out?”

Tony rolled his eyes, checking the cuts and lacerations.  They looked okay.  Then he peeled off his own shirt and his jeans, dumping them into the frankly massive pile of dirty laundry.  Now they were both in their underwear, and Steve was…  Well, his eyes were as big as saucers, moving up and down the length of Tony’s body.  Tony felt more than a tad self-conscious with the arc reactor in his chest and all the scars around it, but Steve wasn’t staring at that, at least not with disgust or reproach in his gaze.  No, there was nothing but admiration there.  That was what it was, wasn’t it?  Was it okay to think that?  Admiration and appreciation and…  “Steve?”

“You don’t gotta wear nothing,” Steve slurred, that Brooklyn drawl back in his voice.  He was breathing a bit heavily.  “If you don’t want.  I was in the army.  Seen plenty of it before.”  He was as red as a tomato.

Yeah, that seemed like an exceptionally bad idea, considering how Steve seemed halfway off his rocker.  Plus the air between them felt charged again, _intimate_ , intense and a little unreal, and Tony couldn’t let himself believe it for one second.  “Come on,” he said, pulling Steve up.  Steve seemed to have trouble with standing, which probably should have been more alarming than it was.  Tony helped him stumble into the massive shower.  The second he opened the glass doors, steam billowed out.  The multiple shower heads and water jets were spraying heat, and when Tony stepped inside, it felt glorious.

It was a good thing the shower had a rather expansive bench.  It was wide and long enough so that Steve could lie down if needed, but he just sat, slumped against the tiles behind him, as Tony washed them both.  Steve had the world’s most boring shampoo and soap, a bottle of something that smelled like nothing and utilitarian lump of white.  It was good enough, and Tony set to lathering up Steve’s hair and scrubbing him down.  Steve didn’t move much.  He did go back to singing again, thankfully not as loud as he could have been but loud enough to be annoying.  This time Tony recognized the song.  A classic.  “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy”.  Steve stumbled his way through the tune for a bit, but then his voice trailed off and he closed his eyes.  “I met ’em.”

“Met who?”  Tony was still washing Steve’s hair.

“Andrews Sisters.  Met ’em when I was with the USO.”  Steve sighed, melting under Tony’s touch.  Tony couldn’t help but scratch at his scalp a little just to listen to Steve moan happily.  The soapy water ran down his chest.  It looked seriously good, and Tony had to fight to stop staring.  “Met ’em and met Marlene Dietrich and Bette Davis and–”

“Was this before or after your acting career?”

Steve was too lost up in memories to notice the little jab at his propaganda films.  “Both but mostly after.  The USO folks wanted me back real bad after Azzano.  Did it a couple of times.  Got up to speak in front… in front of the troops when they wanted… when…”

“Don’t fall asleep in here.”

“I won’t.”

That was an absolute lie, so Tony picked up the pace, rinsing Steve before washing himself quickly.  He would have preferred to luxuriate in the heat a bit, but it wasn’t worth the risk.  After they were clean, he turned the water off and went to get the towels.  He dried them both, Steve gently and himself perfunctorily, before wrapping Steve up in the bath sheet.  Then he helped him stand and walk out.  Steve seemed even wobblier on his feet.  “Can you change your underpants?  I’ll do the rest to get you dressed, but you, uh, should do that.”  He sat Steve back down on the toilet and handed him a fresh pair.

Steve didn’t seem capable of doing much of anything, and for a second Tony was afraid the thing he’d avoided doing this entire time – _seeing Steve naked_ – was going to happen.  It didn’t, though.  Steve summoned some mental acumen and physical coordination from somewhere and nodded, taking the briefs.  Tony grabbed his own clothes and went out in the bedroom for some privacy but mostly to try and tell his overeager body (and his pounding heart) to give it a goddamn rest.

Once he was dressed, he went back into the bathroom, knocking on the door first.  Steve was still on the toilet, the towel on the floor next to him.  He’d gotten his underwear on at least.  He regarded Tony with hazy eyes, and then his face broke into a huge smile that made Tony’s heart absolutely fill to the brim with sudden joy.  “Where’d you go?”

“You, Cap, are higher than a kite,” Tony remarked.  He grabbed the pajamas and came closer, kneeling at Steve’s feet to get them through the pants.

“And _you_ don’t have to hide all the time.”  That came out as slurred, somewhat garbled mess.  Tony stopped working the pants up Steve’s legs to look at him.  His eyes were glazed and he was slumped and lethargic.  Still, there was nothing there that rang of malice or ridicule or even teasing.  Steve was being honest, like he always was.  “You don’t.”

“What?”

“You don’t have to say somethin’ but mean somethin’ else.  You don’t have to keep everyone at arm’s length.”

 _Jesus._   How did he…  The instinctive need to _protect himself_ bubbled up in Tony’s chest.  “What do you know about it?”  That came out harsher than he intended, but this moment had suddenly turned vulnerable, and he felt so exposed even if it was Steve who was helpless and mostly naked.

Steve didn’t seem put off by his tone.  He gave something that could be a shrug.  “Nothin’,” he admitted.  “Just know that you don’t have to be afraid.  Or alone.”

Tony just stared.  He didn’t know what to think, what to feel.  He didn’t know if Steve really meant what he was saying.  Suspicion beaten into him by so many years of hurt and abandonment made him doubt, of course.  It was a self-defense mechanism, one of his most important.  And Steve was out of his head, probably so traumatized by the last twenty-four hours of being seriously ill to even realize what he was saying.

But that didn’t make it untrue.  Or insincere.  Steve was open and earnest, staring at him with those insanely deep blue eyes under those ridiculously long eyelashes with his lips turned in a hopeful smile.  It was too much.  “That’s why we’re a team, ain’t it?  So none of us are alone.”

 _A team._   That… _hurt._   Disappointment came on strong, and Tony swallowed through a tight throat.  “Right.  Come on.”  Tony got him back on his feet, pulling his pajama pants up the rest of the way.  Dealing with the shirt was too much work.  “Let’s get you back to bed before you pass out.”

They staggered back to the bedroom.  The sheets could have stood another change; they were torn and bedraggled and sweaty.  Tony was too tired, though, and Steve was heavy as hell.  He was doing practically nothing to support his own weight.  And the guest rooms were down the hall, which was too far, so this was going to have to do.  Tony set him to the bed, and he immediately tipped and faceplanted into the mattress.  Again Tony rolled his eyes.  “Did you just literally keel over?”

“Ain’t workin’,” came the muffled response.

“What’s that?”

“My body.”  Steve tipped his head just a bit to the side so he could breathe better.  “It ain’t workin’.”

That was stupidly obvious.  “Are you in pain?”  Steve didn’t answer right away, so Tony poked him pretty roughly in the shoulder.  Steve grunted.  “Steve, are you in any pain?”

“Back hurts,” Steve moaned.  Tony heaved Steve’s legs on the bed, and Steve groaned louder.  Now he was completely prone and unmoving, arms limp beside him, breathing slowly with his eyes closed. “Evry’thin’s sore.”

“I bet,” Tony breathlessly said.  He sat next to Steve, staring at the long expanse of his bare back in the dim light of the bedroom.  Before he thought better of it, he laid his palm to the dip of Steve’s spine.  He’d spent the last day touching Steve, taking care of Steve, but not like this.  The muscles there still felt hard and knotted, like the spasms had brutalized them beyond the point of relaxing.  Tony sighed, and, again, _before he thought better,_ he was pressing his other hand there, pressing his palms in hard.

Steve groaned louder, shifting his head a little.  “What’re you…  Oh.  _Oh._   That’s…”

It took hardly more than a moan of absolute bliss for Tony to go all in.  He knelt on the bed, pushing Steve over just a bit for more room and leverage, and went to work on the other man’s sore back.  The room went silent, the long evening shadows stretching languidly, and after all this hell, everything abruptly went cozy.  He’d certainly never fathomed touching Steve like this.  Giving _Captain America_ a back rub.  And maybe he shouldn’t have been, because this didn’t _exactly_ fall into the rubric of making sure Steve didn’t, well, die from the neurotoxin.  This wasn’t even ameliorating the worst of the symptoms.  This wasn’t dealing with the nausea or heat stroke or fever, with the delirium or the pain or the muscle issues.  This was… _intimate._   That word was still stuck in Tony’s head as he worked over Steve’s muscle groups in his shoulders and lower back.  As he traced his ribs and the length of his spine and stimulated wearied nerves to settle and aching muscles to unwind.  This was an apology and an affirmation and so much affection.  This was…

“So good,” Steve murmured from the pillow.  He was breathing very slowly, a tad unevenly.  He was utterly lax and pliant under Tony’s skilled fingers.  “Mmmm.”

“No one ever given you a back rub before?” Tony softly asked, though he supposed the answer was no.  He was getting the impression there were a lot of life’s simple pleasures that Steve Rogers had never experienced.

“Not like this,” Steve whispered dreamily.  “’s so good, Tony.  Toneeee.”

Tony laughed quietly.  “You getting higher there?”

“Mmmm.  Yeah.  High.”  The wet, pink of his tongue lazily slipped out to lick his lips.  “Where’d you learn to…”

“Eh.  Someone I dated in the way back taught me.  She was a masseuse.  A professional one.  A _really_ expensive one.”

“Hook-up?”

“Something like that.  We had a good time together.  A few laughs.  She was nice.”  Tony couldn’t even remember the girl’s name.  Veronica?  Vivian?  Something with a ‘V’.  It was years and years ago, not long after his parents died and he’d inherited the company and more responsibility than any eighteen year-old kid should have.  He’d celebrated by partying and sleeping around and generally having a good time all the time so he could be numb.  “People are always nice when you’re rich.”

He didn’t mean that to come out so self-deprecating, but it did.  And it was kind of true.  Not that he didn’t _like_ being extravagantly wealthy, so wealthy in fact that he tended to forget he owned things like yachts and jets and private islands.  But it did hurt sometimes.  “They’re always trying to get something from you.  It’s hard to tell when someone really wants you rather than your money.”

Steve grunted.  “Sounds…  Sounds lonely.”

Tony shrugged, moving back down to Steve’s lower back where the muscles seemed to be the tensest.  “It can be,” he admitted.  “Even wealth has its price, I guess.  But you get used to it.  Just have to be careful about who you care about is all.  That way it doesn’t hurt so much when it doesn’t last.  And it’s okay.  You know, minor grievance.”  Not really, but that was another self-defense mechanism.  Play down the pain.  Convince yourself that hook-ups were the way to go because hoping for more was stupid.  It worked.  “I can live with it.”

“Not… not fair.”

Tony sighed.  “Well, life’s not fair.  You know more than anyone.  Besides, it’s not like anyone’s falling over themselves weeping for the world’s richest rich boy and his problems.”

“I am.”

Abruptly Tony’s fingers went still.  “What?”

Steve whimpered, shifting uncomfortably, wheezing a little.  “Don’t stop.”

Heart pounding, he resumed his massage, even though _everything_ felt different.  He dug the heel of his palm into a tenacious bad spot in Steve’s back, and the younger man cried out weakly.  His breathing got even more strained, probably from the discomfort and then subsequent release as Tony soothed away the tenderness.  After a silent minute or two, Steve went even more lax, molten and boneless against the mattress.  “Your hands…”  He sighed happily, grinning all blissed out.  “Your hands are so perfect.  Could watch ’em all day.”

Tony almost stopped again, shocked out of his head.  “St-Steve?”

“So… so strong and sure.  Always know how to fix it, how to make it work.  How to turn something special and beautiful.  How to make something better.”

“Steve–”

“Wanted this,” Steve mumbled into the pillow.  His face was the picture of euphoria.  He was grinning with his eyes shut.  There wasn’t a crease of pain or discomfort or worry there.  He was gorgeous.  “Wanted it since I met you, since… since the helicarrier.  Wanted to know what it feels like.  Want you to touch me.”

Tony couldn’t _think_.  For once in his life, he was rendered utterly speechless.  This couldn’t be happening.  He was sleeping, passed out or something.  He’d fallen in the bathroom and cracked his head open.  This was all some crazy, elaborate dream, and he was snoring away on his workbench.  Or maybe he’d been the one blasted with the neurotoxin and he was hallucinating.  _Role reversal._   Something.  _Something_ had to be wrong, some sort of plausible explanation, because _this_ wasn’t happening.

But it was.

And this sure as hell had _nothing_ to do with the team.

Steve’s smile softened.  “You don’t hafta hide from me.  You don’t hafta.  You’re…  You’re _amazin’._   And you shouldn’t be alone.  I want…  I can take care of you.  I want to.”  Steve’s voice was deep, uneven, so slurred and dreamy because he was loopy and crazy and out of his damn mind.  That had to be it.  He was high from the poison still in his body, from whatever pleasure centers were going haywire in his brain.  He didn’t know _what_ he was saying because he absolutely _could not_ be saying he–

“I love you, Tony.”

The world screeched to a halt.  Tony pulled his hands away from Steve’s back.  His fingers were trembling.  His _whole body_ was trembling.  It took a second for his brain to come back online, for his to start beating again.  He had to have heard wrong.  _He had to have._   “Steve?”

Steve didn’t answer.  Tony leaned over him, afraid to touch him now – _God, how can I touch him?_ – and peering closer at Steve’s profile where his face was smooshed into the pillows.  Tony just stared for a second, absolutely reeling.  Steve’s eyes were closed and his face was utterly empty.  His lips were parted, but his breathing sounded… off.  “Steve?  Steve?”  Tony shook his shoulder a little.  “Steve?”

 _Nothing._   The overwhelming, incredible sense of joy that had been building inside him was all but blasted away by sour, awful terror.  “Steve?  Steve!”  He shook harder.  Steve was just sleeping, wasn’t he?  Wasn’t he?  “Steve, wake up.  Wake up!”  He pulled Steve onto his back, leaning over him more to lower his ear to Steve’s mouth.

Christ, he was barely breathing.

“Oh, shit,” Tony whimpered.  “No, no, no…  Steve!  Steve, wake up!  Wake up!”

“Sir!”  JARVIS’ sudden, sharp prompt had him stumbling off the bed.  He ran to the supplies he’d brought up earlier that day, supplies he’d promised himself he wasn’t going to need.  He needed them now.

With the portable ventilator and intubation kit in his arms, he rushed back to the bedroom.  His hands were shaking like crazy as he struggled to get stuff unpacked.  _God, God, God…  It’s paralyzing him.  It’s killing him._   Like some goddamn parting blow.  The neurotoxin’s final strike.  Tony could hardly see through the blur of tears in his eyes.  “What do I do, JARVIS?”

“Stay calm, sir.  Get the pulse oximeter on him first.”

Tony did that, fumbling with the equipment to get the sensor clipped on Steve’s index finger.  The meter booted up.  “Come on, come on, come on…”  It seemed to take forever before the LED display winked to life.  The machine beeped a couple times before taking Steve’s readings.  “Shit.”  His O2 saturation was in the tank.  Tony’s blood went cold.  If the neurotoxin was interfering with his breathing, he could be dead in a matter of minutes.  This was bad.  This was really bad.

He couldn’t handle this.

“Sir, you need to intubate him.”

He couldn’t.  He couldn’t risk hurting Steve.  He couldn’t risk failing.  _He couldn’t._

“Sir!”

He wasn’t good enough.  _I’m not enough._ “Call SHIELD.”

“Sir?”

Tony pushed himself to his feet and rushed over to Iron Man.  “Call them now!  Tell them I’m bringing him in!”

“Sir–”

“Hurry!”  He’d failed.  He hadn’t been able to get Steve through this alone.  The one thing Steve wanted…  He let the armor enfold him, wrapped Steve up in the duvet, and scooped his limp body into his arms.  Then he blasted into the night and prayed Steve would forgive him later for breaking his trust.

* * *

A couple hours later, Steve was stable in the ICU.  The doctors at SHIELD HQ in Times Square took care of him right away, taking him from Iron Man’s flustered embrace and going to work assessing him.  As it turned out, though, there really wasn’t much for them to do.  By the time Tony had gotten Steve to them, the scare with his breathing was already practically over.  Just as the doctors were preparing to intubate him, his respiration drastically improved.

Therefore, all of this, bringing Steve to SHIELD and thus forcing him into something he clearly hadn’t wanted, was for nothing.

Tony was still reeling with that dismal conclusion as he sat at Steve’s bedside.  Steve had been sleeping a few hours now, and he looked much better.  Again.  This time Tony was fairly confident it would be real and lasting.  The monitors next to the bed displaying his vitals were showing nothing distressing; Steve’s pulse, respiration rates, body temperature, and blood pressure were all returning to normal (or normal already).  An IV next to the body was flooding Steve with fluids to contend with any issues from dehydration (although the doctors had assured him he’d done a decent job in handling that problem).  SHIELD’s nurses had bandaged up his hands and his face, though it hardly seemed necessary.  They’d done it for the sake of doing _something_ it seemed, because when they’d used Tony’s scanner to test Steve’s blood toxicity, it had decreased to 5%, give or take a point or two.  For all intents and purposes, this was over.

They were doing their due diligence, though.  Blood samples had been taken.  Scans had been conducted.  During all that, Tony had gone back to the Tower and changed.  He’d tried to make himself look somewhat presentable after hardly any sleep and no food and a day of utter chaos and torment.  Nice gray suit.  Red silk tie.  Maybe it was overkill, but the clothes felt like their own armor in a sense, like this façade of being cool and suave and confident.  Of being that richest of rich boys who didn’t care about something like this because nothing meant anything.  Plus, it added to this stupid idea (that was absolutely foolish and completely untrue) that he was the same person he had been yesterday afternoon.  That nothing had _changed_ , not with him and not with Steve and not with their relationship (whatever that relationship was – Tony had no freaking clue at this point).  _Plus,_ it made him feel just a little more empowered when Fury ripped him a new one (which he had) for disobeying orders and messing around with an unknown alien item without the necessary protections and safeguards.  And, of course, that little part where he’d endangered Captain America’s life with his monumental act of hubris.  _And_ the part where he’d tried to hide it and take care of the problem on his own when he should have _immediately_ brought Steve to SHIELD for proper treatment, quarantine, and study.  Not for a second had Tony considered passing the buck on that one, even if that part had been Steve’s fault.  Steve’s stubbornness that had caused that situation.  Nope, he kept that fact strictly to himself.

Well, no harm done in the end, it seemed.  Aside from yelling and glaring a lot, Fury didn’t _do_ anything to him.  Considering Steve was alive and well on the road to recovery and the only damage had occurred to his own property, Tony’s actions didn’t merit much more than a stern dressing down, and he could handle that.  No problem.  It didn’t hurt that bad.

Anyway, there he was at Steve’s bedside again.  Despite the fact that it had only been a day (less than a day – it was eleven o’clock, and Steve had gone down at one last night), he felt like he’d been right here enough that this seemed to be where he belonged.  And it was weird (i.e., wrong) to have other people taking care of Steve’s needs.  He was tired enough that he kept telling the nurses and doctors things they already knew, what Steve’s symptoms had been and how serious they’d gotten and that they needed to watch for this or take care of that.  The SHIELD staff humored him.  It was pretty obvious that no one really had to watch for anything much now.  Steve was definitely out of the woods.

That didn’t make Tony feel much better, to be honest.  This really was his fault.  Fury’s shellacking had been appropriately directed.  He’d deserved every word of it, stood there in the SHIELD Director’s one-eyed stare and took it all.  The irony was, though, screwing around with the egg wasn’t what was making him feel so guilty.  No, if he’d just toughed out taking caring of Steve a _little_ longer, had a tad more faith in the super soldier serum, he wouldn’t have had to bring Steve here at all.  No one would have found out about any of this, which would have been nice and less embarrassing.  However, that was a minor concern compared to how _Steve_ would feel when he woke up here, in the freaking SHIELD ICU surrounded by doctors and nurses, _exactly_ where he hadn’t wanted to be.  If Tony hadn’t made this stupid call, Steve would have been sleeping back in his bed, breathing easily with his blood toxicity nearly down to nothing and everything essentially on its way back to normal.  It almost seemed to Tony like he and that neurotoxin had played a game of chicken or tried to see who’d blink first.

Guess who lost.  He’d blinked.  He’d blinked _big time._   Now there were machines recording vitals and blood samples on file and CT and PET scans and all this crap.  Now all of this had happened, and it didn’t mean a thing.  Hindsight was 20/20 apparently.  Tony couldn’t feel any shittier.

Except when he thought about what Steve had said.  _That_ made him feel small and pathetic because, even though he knew in his heart it _couldn’t be true,_ he hoped it was.  He hoped with every fiber of his being that it was.

_“I love you, Tony.”_

Tony’s thoughts were spinning and spinning, going around in a useless circle, flying high with hope and then plummeting with fear only to soar again and sink again and again and _again_.  He didn’t know what to make of it.  Was there any chance Steve had meant what he’d said?  Or had he been high out of his mind, slowly asphyxiating and too drunk on endorphins to notice?  Had it been real or just a desperate, crazy utterance that was totally out of character, spurned by delirium and twenty-four hours of illness and torture?  Maybe it had been wrought by the relief Steve had finally had or the gratitude he’d maybe been experiencing.  Or he’d gotten something twisted around in his head.  Maybe he’d hallucinated someone else rubbing his back so tenderly.  Mistaken identity.  That had to be it.

 _No.  No, he said, “I love you, Tony.” Tony.  He said my name._   That shot that theory in the foot.  And Steve didn’t lie.  Maybe he was too much of a Boy Scout at times, all honesty and integrity and that sort of aggravating nonsense, but the fact that he truly believed in said nonsense meant he _wouldn’t_ lie.  So that moment back there, where Tony’s fingers had been caressing and massaging Steve’s back, and Steve had been moaning happily into his pillow and saying all that stuff he shouldn’t have said…  It couldn’t be anything _less_ than the truth.  It just couldn’t be.

Tony sighed and closed his eyes, because in a way, that made it all worse.  Now Tony was the unfortunate recipient of a secret he shouldn’t know.  This was like some stupid scenario in a sitcom or something, put there for romantic hijinks and zaniness, only it had actually happened.  Steve had been loopy and exhausted and practically passed out under him, and he’d confessed something he normally would _never_ have said.  Not tight-lipped, serious, morally righteous Captain America.  Tony had had _no idea_ Steve felt that way about him.  Steve with his straight-laced morals and outdated ideas about society.

 _That’s not entirely true._   No, it wasn’t.  He had to accept that.  All the friction between them, the way they bickered and argued and tested each other, the way they challenged each other… Complemented one another.  The way Steve had very clearly been checking him out in the shower back there.  What Steve had said on the balcony about losing him.  The raw terror and panic in his eyes and the fact that he’d been ready to _jump off a building_ just to save him.  It seemed crass and self-serving to use these moments as evidence in his mental debate, but Tony couldn’t deny it.  Steve was very clearly attracted to him.

 _“Your hands are so perfect.  Could watch them all day._ ”  This was absolutely insane.  _“Always know how to fix it, how to make it beautiful.  How to make something better.”_   Impossible.  _“Wanted it since I met you, since… since the helicarrier.  Want you to touch me.”_   Steve couldn’t…  _“You’re amazing.  I want…  I can take care of you.  I want to.”_   Steve couldn’t feel about Tony the way Tony felt about him.  That wasn’t how their relationship worked.

_“I love you, Tony.”_

He had no idea what to do.  He wasn’t supposed to know what he knew, and he had _no idea_ what to do with it.

“Tony!”

Tony looked up from where he’d been blankly staring at Steve’s face.  Bruce came rushing into the private room, seemingly out of nowhere.  During all the emotional rollercoaster of the last few hours, Tony had completely forgotten that Banner was flying back from India.  He must have just gotten in.  Now that Tony thought about it, he was pretty sure he’d felt his phone vibrating in his suit pocket a few times not long ago.  It had to have been Bruce calling or JARVIS informing him Bruce was almost there.

And Bruce looked flustered and exhausted.  That made sense, since he’d flown out before dawn in India.  The time change had made the day ridiculously long for him.  He took one look at Steve asleep in the hospital bed, and his shoulders slumped.  “Is he okay?”  He reached for the tablet at the foot of the bed that had Steve’s chart on it.

“Yeah, he’s okay,” Tony answered in a deadened voice.

“When JARVIS told me what happened back at the Tower, I anticipated the worst, but…”  Bruce look up from scanning through the data.  “Wow.  This looks pretty good, actually.  The neurotoxin’s almost gone.”

“Yeah.”

“Faster than I thought, even.  Little more than twenty-four hours.”  Bruce’s lips puffed out with a slightly incredulous but mostly grateful sigh.  “The super soldier serum’s amazing stuff.”  Tony couldn’t find it within himself to celebrate.  “How’d you convince him to come here, though?”

Obviously JARVIS hadn’t told Bruce everything.  And obviously fate or God or whatever was trying to stick it to Tony for being such an asshole.  Feeling rotten wasn’t sufficient.  Confession and contrition was required.  “I didn’t.  I panicked.”

Bruce’s banal face broke in a sad frown.  He came closer, sliding Steve’s chart back into its place before clasping Tony on the shoulder.  Tony fought the urge to recoil.  He felt low and raw and not at all worthy of pretty much any affection or absolution right now.  “No, you didn’t.  You did what anyone would have done.  What he _should_ have let you do the second he was exposed.”

“He had his reasons,” Tony argued.  Honestly, he had no idea why he was defending Steve about this.  Thinking back on everything that had happened, on the number of times Tony had been legitimately terrified that he was in over his head and that Steve was going to die because of it, the whole thing had been damn stupid.

Bruce shook his head.  “What reasons?”

That irked Tony.  The tone in the other man’s voice was a bit judgmental (or it seemed to him, anyway), and the two of them were hardly exemplars of rationality.  “I don’t know.”  He still didn’t.  He didn’t understand at all.  “It doesn’t matter, though.  It’s what he wanted, and I couldn’t protect that.”

The frown on Bruce’s face went deeper.  “I didn’t think you cared.  You were the one who told me last night that you couldn’t be his friend.”

“Yeah, well,” Tony said, like he had some sort of explanation.  He didn’t.  Nothing he’d be willing to share with Bruce or anyone else for that matter.  “Traumatic circumstances bonding people together and that sort of crap.  Bridging the gap.”

Bruce didn’t seem entirely satisfied with that as if he _knew_ there was more to it but couldn’t put his finger on what.  He probably did.  Tony wasn’t doing an especially good job at hiding anything, what with the pain he figured was all over his face and the worry deep in his eyes and the fact that he was _here_ , maintaining a pretty pointless vigil, when he should have been asleep back at the Tower, free from this responsibility.  Tony couldn’t stand his scrutiny, so he went back to staring at Steve’s empty face as the other man slept.

Eventually Banner heaved another sigh.  “Alright.  I’ll, uh…  I’ll leave you to it.  I’ll go see what SHIELD has discovered about the toxin.”

As Bruce turned to go, Tony forced himself to function.  He looked up, taking a deeper breath.  “Hey, Bruce.”  The other man stopped at the door.  “Thanks for helping.  I, um…  I wouldn’t have been able to do it without you.”

Bruce cocked an amused eyebrow.  “Yeah, you would have.  That’s the thing.  You think you and he have nothing in common?  Bull.  You’re both ridiculous, stubborn idiots.”  Tony frowned, but that really wasn’t meant as an insult.  Bruce was grinning.  “Get some sleep, Tony.”

It was quiet after that.  Tony sat there for a long time.  The machines around Steve kept beeping quietly, keeping tabs on his vital signs.  The nurses and doctors were shuffling around outside the room, but they didn’t come in.  Nothing and no one moved.  The minutes wore on and on, long and tenuous like everything was in some sort of weird stasis.  Tony finally sighed and leaned forward in his chair.  He took Steve’s hand.  He’d been holding it off and on for the last couple hours when he thought no one was watching.  Steve’s fingers were lax, the awful rigidity having long melted away.  The slashes from where he’d broken the door the night before were also well on their way to fading completely.  In a matter of hours, it’d be like nothing ever happened.

That wasn’t what he wanted.  Tony rubbed his thumb over Steve’s knuckles.  _Your hands._ Steve said he loved his hands.  They looked strange like this, holding Steve’s fingers the way they were.  Distraught, Tony looked up and gazed again at Steve’s face, at his unshaven jaw and full lips and closed eyes.  Steve looked utterly perfect like this.  It was trite and clichéd, but he seemed downright angelic.  _Sleeping beauty._   Tony’s lips curled into a little smile in spite it all.  He was punchy and exhausted.  _Sleeping beauty needs a kiss._   He watched Steve’s mouth and wondered what it’d feel like.  He leaned forward, thought about stealing one just to know.  This was hardly the first time he’d tried to imagine it.

But it should be the last, because then it occurred to him.  Exactly what had happened really sunk in.  Exactly _why_ things looked strange.  _What_ was really between them.  This wasn’t a precursor to a deeper bond or a more meaningful relationship.  It wasn’t love.  All it was was a night that one of them had spent sick and the other had been the only one around to care.  All it was was a secret that wasn’t meant to be shared by a man who was far out of Tony’s league.  Steve was perfect.  He was Captain America.  He was young and beautiful.  _Amazing_ , just as he’d called Tony.  And they were too different.

It’d never work.

Tony found himself kissing Steve’s knuckles instead.  It was hardly anything, a brush of his lips that was chaste and unimposing.  _Friendly,_ even.  “Sorry.  Sorry I couldn’t handle this.  I can’t handle this.  Sorry.  Sorry!”  The words came out fast and breathy, and he struggled to keep his composure.  “Sorry, Cap.”

Then he set Steve’s hand to the bed.  This was what he was going to do.  The right thing.  The selfless thing.  The best thing he could for both of them, because Steve hadn’t meant to reveal his feelings.  He knew that even if he knew nothing else.  And even if Steve had meant it, he wouldn’t remember it.  He’d been so delirious, so out of it, that Tony couldn’t imagine he would.  Plus, running away would get Tony out of there when Steve woke up, so he wouldn’t need to deal with Steve being upset about where he was.  Yeah, that was good.  _This_ was good.  It’d be better if he was just gone, if this whole thing was just one of those things, something weird that had happened but was never mentioned again.  Something he kept to himself.  He could do that and spare them both.

Therefore, as far as he was concerned, Steve had never said anything at all.

Still…  Walking away was much harder than he thought it would be.

* * *

The next couple days dragged by.  They felt like forever.  Tony went back to the Tower, back to his workshop and all of his gadgets and projects and tools all cluttered on the benches and tables.  That was okay.  Really, it was.  He was fine with it.  He had stuff to do.  Aside from the mountain of his own work, he and Bruce spent some time studying the neurotoxin (in a safe environment at SHIELD HQ and promptly reporting all the results to the researchers there).  Bruce theorized that the toxin wasn’t truly a toxin, not to the aliens at any rate.  He thought that maybe it was some sort of weird stimulant, meant to increase neural activity and muscular performance.  A shot of extra energy, in a way.  A boost.  Like the jolt in Red Bull, he supposed.  And the serum, with its increased metabolism, put that into overdrive.  Bruce started to wonder about what the metabolic rates of the aliens were.  He was a veritable geyser of excitement, going on and on about the unknown molecules in the powder inside the egg, speculating about alien diets and alien ecosystems and alien physiology and Tony frankly didn’t give the slightest hint of a crap about it.  He faked it, nodding and pretending to care as Bruce prattled and babbled.  He also helped the other scientist design a much safer, refined method to open the remaining alien eggs, one that was based on his “zap it till it cracks” approach from before.  It worked well enough, and Bruce had samples of alien goo and powder up the wazoo.

 _Whoop de doo._   Tony really didn’t care.  He was mostly just keeping busy.  He was glad Bruce and the SHIELD researchers were getting something out of all of this.  Yay for science.  And yay for things returning to normal.

Only normal sucked now.  Normal was frustrating and aggravating and not nearly good enough, which led back to the main problem: he hadn’t seen Steve _at all._   He knew Steve was fine.  He knew that Steve had left the care of SHIELD’s physicians the morning after he’d been admitted with a clean bill of health.  Tony might have maybe (okay, definitely) hacked SHIELD’s computer system to find out about that.  Everything was completely normal, Steve’s blood chemistry and vital signs and so on.  He’d left against medical advice (the doctors had apparently wanted to keep him another day for observation considering the close call he’d had with the hyperthermia and asphyxiation, but he’d, unsurprisingly, refused).  And Tony knew, too, that he was back in the Tower.  He’d made sure to have Steve’s suite cleaned and repaired right away, but right away still took more than a couple hours and JARVIS had informed him he was giving Steve temporary quarters on one of the guest floors.  Now Steve’s suite was back to normal, so Steve was back there and he was well.

But he hadn’t come to see Tony.  Honestly, Tony didn’t know why he expected he would.  It was pretty arrogant and selfish to think that Steve would rush up immediately upon his return to talk to him.  After all, Tony was the one who’d caused all this to begin with.  In this very workshop with his projects spread all around him, he’d been the one to insist he knew what he was doing, that it’d be _fine_ to screw around with Pandora’s Box.  Well, Pandora’s Box had literally exploded in their faces, and there didn’t seem to be way to put any of this bad stuff back.  He’d sworn to himself that he wasn’t going to think about the long hours he’d spent taking care of Steve, about how vulnerable and unguarded Steve had been, about how Steve had needed him.  He wasn’t going to think about what Steve had said or wonder if he really meant it.  He wasn’t going to freaking obsess over this the same way he obsessed over anything.  Nope.  This time, he was going to ignore it, keep the promise he made to himself, and let it all go.  This time, Tony Stark was going to be satisfied with _not_ knowing something.

Yeah, right.

“Sir, your calculations are finished.”  JARVIS’ quiet declaration yanked him from yet another bout of _not_ thinking about Steve.  Tony sighed, shaking his head like the physical action could clear it, and turned to the holographic workspace in front of him.  “By replacing the voltage regulators in the arrowhead, it seems you can increase the energy output by nearly 15%.”

This was one of his many projects that needed his attention.  He promised Barton he’d fix his concussive arrows to deal more concussion and less fizzling out on impact.  It wasn’t a hard job by any means, which meant that it wasn’t much of a distraction, either.  An hour into redesigning the arrowhead, he’d already solved the problem.  “Well, at least I’ll get it done before he gets back,” Tony grumbled, swiping away his circuit layout and going to get what he needed to assemble a prototype.  “They’re still coming back tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow morning, if the SHIELD extraction team docket is to be believed.”  JARVIS had hacked that when he’d gone searching for Steve’s status, so Romanoff and Barton’s travel plans weren’t so secret anymore.  “If you begin now, you should have time to complete the arrow for testing before dinner.”

“I’ll work through dinner.”  Eating seemed unnecessary, even if he was hungry.  He should have had lunch, but he was too glum to think about it.  “That way I can get started on Romanoff’s thing, too.”

JARVIS knew better than to argue.  “Would you care for your hourly report on Captain Rogers’ whereabouts?”

Tony glared at the ceiling as if that was actually where JARVIS was.  Despite his morally righteous indignation at times, JARVIS actually went along with Tony’s less than scrupulous acts quite often, like abiding by him testing that stupid egg in the first place.  Or spying on Steve.  He’d been doing the latter since Steve had come home yesterday morning, keeping Tony apprised on where Steve was and what he was doing.  It was a little creepy, but Tony was worried (okay, that was a little bit of a lie.  Not that he wasn’t worried so much as that that was the only reason he was interested).  He wanted to know if Steve really was back to normal, if anything had _changed_ for him.  He wanted to know if Steve was bothered or maybe thinking about coming to see him.  He wanted to figure things out without directly investigating.  Or, you know, going to actually talk to Steve.

Letting this awkward misery fester was so much better.

“No,” Tony said.

“He is back from his meeting with Director Fury,” JARVIS reported anyway, “and currently preparing to take a shower.”

His brain immediately went to Steve’s muscled body, lean and slick and covered in soapy suds under his hands.  He pushed the image away like poison.  “Good for him.”

JARVIS always saw through his defenses, hence all his abiding and enabling.  “Might I suggest, sir, that going to–”

“No.”  He wasn’t doing this.  _Let it go._   If Steve wasn’t coming to him (God, that hurt), then it was over, and anything he did to initiate contact at this point just felt pathetic and desperate, two things Tony was _not._   Besides, he swore to himself he wouldn’t build this up into something it wasn’t.  It _wasn’t_ anything.  _He_ was the one making a big deal about it all in his head.  _He_ was the one still thinking about it, all twisted up in equal parts hope and fear.  _He_ was the one who had been holding his breath for two days, waiting eagerly for some sign that Steve was coming to him.  That was _him,_ not Steve.  Steve was going on with his life like nothing had happened, so Tony really needed to do the same.  He had an ego and reputation to protect.  He had a promise he needed to keep.  He needed to do the right thing.

Walking away wasn’t just hard, though.  It was impossible.

“Bring up the Widow’s Bite designs while I work on this.  Get started on the upgrade,” he ordered instead.  “If we can get that done, it’ll be like Christmas for those two when they get back.”

“Yes, sir.”

They didn’t talk for a while.  Tony took a deep breath and threw himself into fixing Barton’s arrows.  The work still wasn’t terribly stimulating, but it was good enough that he could concentrate on it and forget everything else for a while.  While he was wiring and soldering, JARVIS was running through the upgrade to Romanoff’s gloves.  Every once in a while Tony spent a moment or two on those, designing just to give his brain a break from building.  It was fine, good enough to keep him occupied.  It was fine.  It was good enough.

Until it wasn’t.  Until the world came to a screeching halt again.  Tony was walking back from his supply room, arms full of things he’d need for Barton’s arrows and Widow’s gloves, when he found himself staring right at Steve.

_Steve._

JARVIS had obviously (and silently) let him into the workshop.  Again.  He looked… _good._   Healthy and strong and beautiful again and not at all like Captain America.  No uniform or shield or stoic, towering stature or intimidating presence.  No, he was in simple jeans and an even simpler red t-shirt (at least it wasn’t gray this time).  He looked freshly showered, hair just a little wispy and damp, skin glowing fresh and warm.  Tony’s breath locked up in his throat from shock.  His heart started pounding, and he almost dropped everything he was carrying right in the middle of the floor.  “Hi,” he lamely greeted.

“Hi,” Steve returned with a hint of a smile.  He seemed nervous, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jeans and rocking back a little on his heels.  “JARVIS said it was okay to come in, but I can come back if you’re busy–”

“No,” Tony replied.  That sounded too fast, too frantic, but he couldn’t hardly care.  Steve was here.  He was _finally_ here.  “No, it’s fine.  I was just working on some stuff for the team.”

“Ah,” Steve said.  He smiled more fully.  “That’s good.”

“Yeah.”

The conversation died a quick and merciful death, leaving that awkward awfulness again.  Tony puttered around his workbench, every sense alive and focused intently on Steve, every nerve in his body tingling.  Steve just stood there, watching him.  Watching him and watching his hands as he built.  Worked.  _Made things special and beautiful and–_

_Don’t stop._

Eventually the memories got to be too burdensome and irritating, and Tony swallowed through a dry throat and tried his damnedest to seem nonchalant as he grabbed a precision screwdriver.  “Did you, um…  Did you want something?”

Steve shifted his weight again.  He was blushing.  Definitely nervous.  “Yeah.  Yeah, sorry.  I just, uh…”  He shook his head.  “Sorry I haven’t come by until now.  It took me a couple days to figure out what I want to say.  I’m…  Well, I’m not the best at this.  You know.”

Tony knew.  He wasn’t the best either.  “Alright,” he said, setting the tools he’d just picked up right back down.  He was ridiculously relieved Steve was finally going to say something.  “Shoot.”

Steve hesitated another couple uncomfortable seconds, but then he seemed to get his act together.  “First, I wanted to thank you.  You really went to task for me.  Took care of me.  Made sure I didn’t die.”  That was said a little ruefully with a whole lot of pent-up embarrassment behind it.  “And not even just that.  You made sure I was as comfortable as I could be, made it…  Well, not pleasant, but tolerable.  If I’d gone off and handled it by myself…   Well.”  There was a frankly adorable, self-deprecating little grin.  “It’d have been bad.”

Tony’s own grin was pretty shameful and sheepish.  “Least I could do,” he said, although that felt completely inadequate and way too freaking _formal_ compared the emotions surging in his heart.  Formal, with these tough, seemingly impenetrable barriers between them again.  That wasn’t what he wanted at all.  “I mean, I was the one who caused it.”

Steve shrugged, and that was enough to assuage Tony’s guilt almost completely.  “Shit happens,” he offered with another smile, this one softer and sweeter.  Knowing.  Tony couldn’t help but feel warm at that, even as Steve shuffled his feet again.  “Anyway, so I wanted to tell you that.  And I wanted to…  Well, I wanted to apologize.  I put you in a really difficult situation, and I had no business doing that.  Things aren’t very clear in my head, but I’m pretty sure I gave you a really hard time about taking me to SHIELD.”

 _Oh._   That was what he was apologizing for.  Not for his impromptu love confession.  Tony had somewhat forgotten about the whole refusing-to-go-to-the-hospital bit over the last couple days.  “Yeah, you did,” he said.  He shrugged, because he didn’t care and he was disappointed they were talking about this.  “It’s fine.  You don’t need to apologize.  I’m not mad.”

“No, no,” Steve said.  He took a few steps closer until only the workbench was between them.  He sighed shortly, like he was pushing himself to do something he didn’t want.  “No, what I did was completely irrational.  It endangered us both.  I…  I need to explain myself.”

“You don’t have to explain any–”

“I don’t like doctors.”

Tony couldn’t help his laugh.  “Thanks, Captain Obvious.”  Steve looked defeated and irritated.  “No, no.  I’m sorry.  It’s just…  Yeah, so you don’t like doctors.  I don’t like doctors.  Lots of people don’t like them.  That’s fine.  Nothing to be ashamed of.”

“No.”  Steve’s tone was a little terser, like he was losing control of the conversation and getting upset about it.  He closed his eyes, sighing again, composing himself.  “You know, my mom was a nurse.  She was a nurse for my whole life before she died.  Eighteen years.  She _died_ from being a nurse.”

Tony was vaguely aware that he’d read that in Steve’s file.  “Yeah.  I’m sorry.”

“No, that’s not…  She loved what she did.  That’s not why – I’m awful at this.”  Yet _another_ sigh, and Steve finally seemed to pull his thoughts together.  “You complained that I was a really lousy patient for being sick so much when I was a kid.  Didn’t you?”

Tony couldn’t tell if Steve was accusing him of something.  “I didn’t mean to–”

“You were absolutely right.  I _am_ a lousy patient because I’ve spent so much time _as_ a patient.”  Steve had snapped that at him right after said lousy patient remark, but Tony hadn’t really thought about it much at the time.  There’d been too much fever and puking and the like for him to care.  “When I was little, I was sick _all_ the time.  All winter, every winter.  In the summer, too.  I was small and skinny and my immune system was terrible.  My heart didn’t work right, and I had scoliosis and a bad ear and anemia…  It went on and on.  I was an encyclopedia of diseases and disorders.  So, as you can imagine, I was at the doctor a lot.  _Constantly._ ”

Tony watched him work through his emotions.  It was pretty obvious where this was going, and it made sense.  “Getting poked and prodded sucked as much back then as it does now, right?  I get it.”

“It wasn’t just that.  It was…  You go to this one and that one.  They examine you.  Render their opinions.  It’s not fixable, they say.  Not curable.  Never going to get better.  ‘Your son has this and this and _this_ , Mrs. Rogers.  I can’t treat him.  You can try this and that, but I don’t think it’ll matter.’”  Steve shook his head, eyes glazed with memories.  “After a while?  They stop treating you like a person.  They start looking at you like you’re a problem.  A _list_ of problems.  And when they can’t solve any of them, they start saying things like, ‘It’s probably in his head, Mrs. Rogers.  There’s a growing body of evidence that asthma is psychosomatic.  Have you considered institutional treatment?’  Or ‘he needs a father, Mrs. Rogers.  A father teaches a son how to be a man.  A father teaches a son how to be strong.  He’s too weak, and that’s why he’s sick all the time.’  And it was…”  The look in his eyes got darker.  “Humiliating.  Degrading.  Dehumanizing.”

Tony didn’t know what to say.  He knew that medical issues were treated very differently seventy years ago.  Physicians then didn’t know what they did now, and sometimes they turned to mental illness as an explanation for things they couldn’t understand or treat, asthma included.  He couldn’t imagine how being handled that way must have felt, but Steve had probably nailed it on the head there.  _Dehumanizing._   Being regarded like a constellation of diseases and symptoms and _problems_ rather than a person who had feelings and a sense of self and spirit.  It sounded terrible.

And it got worse.  “One winter – I think was five or six – I had scarlet fever real bad.  Real bad.  Barely survived it, and it permanently damaged my heart.  That’s how I got the murmur.  Anyway, I found out way after when I was much older that my mom took me to a bunch of different doctors, and all of them thought I was done for.  She even had one over to the apartment, and he told her that it’d be better for her if she were to let me die, that even if I survived, with all my other health issues and the damage the fever would probably do that I’d be a burden.  I wouldn’t see adulthood.  If I did, I’d only spread my bad genes.  He even offered to help her make the procedure comfortable for me.  In other words, he wanted to drug me until I stopped breathing.  Honestly, it wouldn’t have taken much.”

“Jesus,” Tony whispered.  That was basically akin to _euthanizing_ him.  Weeding out the bad breeding stock.  He felt sick just thinking about it.

Steve went on, like he didn’t want to think about it.  “So none of that made me feel too good about doctors.  And then having doctor after doctor tell me that I wasn’t good enough for the army.  Not that there aren’t good ones.  Erskine was a good one.  He was the first one in a long time who looked at me and saw something under the health problems.  But after he died…  It was the same thing all over again, only… _different._   I know that doesn’t make sense, but it’s true.  It was the opposite of what it used to be.  It went from everyone looking at me like I was this problem to everyone treating me like I was this specimen.  Like I was this symbol of physiological _perfection_.  Right after Project: Rebirth, they stuck me in a lab for days.  They had to test me, had to see what I could do.  They took tons of blood and some tissue samples.  Figured out how fast I could run and how long, how much I could lift, how high I could jump and it went on and on.  Measuring and analyzing with their clipboards and their pencils and…”  He stopped himself.  “It was the same thing.  I still wasn’t a person.”

Tony stared at him.  Something hurt inside him at hearing all that.  Before he could say anything, though, Steve was speaking again.  “You know, a lot of people ask me if I remember the ice.  People at SHIELD and the psychiatrists Fury wanted me to see.  Barton and Romanoff.  Even Thor asked.  And, yeah, I remember the ice a little.  Enough that it haunts me, which I’m pretty sure you got to experience firsthand.”  Tony gave a sad smile.  “But what bothers me more sometimes?  I _remember_ regaining consciousness in SHIELD’s lab.  I didn’t at first, but ever since it’s started coming back, it’s been sticking with me.  I remember laying there on that table, and I couldn’t move, and I was scared, and there were doctors around me, talking and doing their tests and I…”  The rueful smile came back, the self-deprecating one.  He was ashamed, dropping his gaze to the floor.  “It’s stupid.”

Tony shook his head.  “No, it’s not.  It’s not.”  Steve grimaced, unconvinced, opening his mouth to argue.  Tony didn’t let him.  “Hey.  Hey!”  Steve looked up.  “We all have our hang-ups.  I, uh, I don’t like being handed things.”

Steve’s eyebrows went up in surprise.  “Really?”

“Sure.  Ask Pepper.”  Tony shrugged.  “And it’s stupid, too, but…  I don’t know.  When my parents died, it just always felt like people were giving me stuff.  Things to read.  Things to sign.  Things to remember them by.  Stuff for the company.  I can still remember sitting in my dad’s place in my first board meeting at Stark Industries, right in his chair, and Obie handed me something to read, and it felt so goddamn _wrong_ …  That’s stuck with me.  All these years, it’s stuck with me.  I was twenty-one.”

Now it was Steve’s turn to smile sadly.  “Sorry.”

“Yeah.  Well, it kinda turned into this thing.  Like if I didn’t have to take something, I didn’t have to deal with it.  It doesn’t have to make sense.  And…”  Tony sighed.  “I’m sorry I couldn’t keep you out of the hospital.”

“Oh, hell, Tony…  I’m pretty shocked you even tried.  It was stupid and crazy and the fact that you’d do that for me…”  Steve pressed his lips together.  “Thanks.”

It felt good to hear that.  Validating.  Affirming.  Tony grinned, not caring at all that he was blushing.  “You’re welcome, Cap.”

The quiet returned.  It wasn’t quite so heavy this time, but it was no more satisfying.  There had to be more than this.  Not that Steve trusting him with this truth about himself wasn’t something important, because it was.  It was _vitally_ important that they understood each other enough now to reveal that sort of personal weakness.  Talk about growth between them.  But that wasn’t what Tony wanted, not _all_ he wanted.  There had to be _more._

It didn’t seem like there was going to be.  Steve nodded awkwardly.  “Alright, well, that’s what I wanted to say.  I’ll leave you to your work.  Maybe…  Maybe sometime we can have dinner together again?  With less puking.”  He gave a weak smile at his own lame joke.  Tony didn’t know what to say.  His mind was racing.  He wanted that.  He wanted an endless number of dinners, of cuddling on the couch, of talking about everything and nothing, of learning _everything_ there was to know about Steve.  He wanted to take him shopping like he thought before, buy him clothes and watches and cars and whatever he wanted, _everything_ he wanted.  He wanted to fight at Steve’s side, protect him from anything that hurt him.  Stand tall against evil with him.  Be his teammate and his friend and the thorn in his side and his lover.  He wanted all of that from Steve in turn, Steve to take care of him, Steve to love him.  He wanted it all.

And it was slipping away.  “Anyway,” Steve said awkwardly, “have a good night.”  He turned to go.  He was _leaving_.

 _No!_   Desire and desperation surged up from inside Tony, and he raced around the workbench, banging his hip into the side and dumping some things to the floor with a clatter.  He didn’t notice the pain at all, crossing the distance between him and Steve in two huge strides and grabbing Steve’s arm and pulling him around and kissing him.

_Kissing him._

Steve went stiff at first, and for an interminably long moment, Tony feared he’d been all wrong to take this impulsive chance.  He’d made a terrible mistake.  He’d screwed this up, made the wrong assumptions, believed in the _wrong things_ , and Steve was horrified and disgusted and he’d ruined _everything._

But then Steve went soft against him, all of the tension just melting from his muscles, and he wrapped his arms around him and his mouth yielded to him.  _Oh, God._   It felt so good, incredible and wonderful and amazing, better than anything he’d ever imagined, and Tony delved in like a man thirsting.  He kissed Steve deeper, tangled his hands lightly in Steve’s hair, taking what was offered, wanting more, wanting anything and everything Steve was willing to give him.

Steve finally pulled away with a soft gasp, opening eyes he’d let slip shut to gaze dazedly at Tony.  “I didn’t…”  He shook his head, clearly overwhelmed, and Tony gripped his shoulders and gently tugged him closer.  “I didn’t think you wanted me!”

“I know,” Tony said breathlessly.  “I didn’t think you wanted _me_.  Why would you?”

“How’d you…  All this time, I didn’t think you knew.  You couldn’t know.  I didn’t know how to tell you!  I didn’t–”  Tony couldn’t help a little laugh.  Steve stopped his flustered rambling, looking mightily confused.  “What?”

“I guess you don’t remember incriminating yourself.”

Steve’s face fractured more in puzzlement.  “Huh?  I…  _Oh, God._   That really happened?”

Tony laughed more.  “Yeah, it really happened.”

Befuddled was an increasingly cute look on Steve.  He stood there with his arms around Tony and Tony’s around him, looking a crazy mixture of horrified, relieved, and amused.  “I have spent _two days_ trying to figure out if it was some kind of dream or what.  Oh, Lord.  Tony, I…  I didn’t mean to dump that on you.  I didn’t–”

“Jesus, no!  No.  You don’t have to apologize!”  Tony cupped Steve’s face, staring into his deeply blue eyes that he was seeing in an entirely new light.  “You don’t have to say anything other than answer one question, okay?  Did you…”  He almost lost his nerve.  “Did you mean it?”

Steve searched his eyes.  “Of course, I meant it,” he said.  His lips quirked into a sly smile.  “I’m always honest.”

“I haven’t been,” Tony confessed in a shaking voice.  “I haven’t been!  But I want to be.  God, Steve, I’ve been so stupid.  I – I love you, too.”  Steve gasped with a bright smile, and Tony floundered to keep talking, to _tell_ him.  “I love you.  I want you.  I need you!  And you think I’m amazing, but I’m not.  Not without the Avengers.  Not without you!”

“Tony–”

Tony swallowed Steve’s words with another kiss, this one even deeper and more heated than the first.  Hands grappled at arms and hips, and they stumbled back into the workbench, lips locked together.  Steve was warm and sweet, so incredible that it was unfathomable even if he had no idea how to kiss.  Tony would happily teach him.  He’d teach him _anything_ he wanted to know.  He’d give him anything, anything to make this real, to make this last, to do right by him…

And that started here and now.  He pulled away, pinned against the bench, stealing a breath and taking a second.  “Wait, wait.  You’re sure about this?  You and me…”  He winced despite himself.  He’d never done this with another person, never doubted like this, but he had to with Steve because Steve deserved it.  “This could be a really bad idea.”

Steve hummed against Tony’s neck where he was sloppily kissing.  Maybe he didn’t know how to do this, _never had before_ , but he was eager and willing and far from shy.  “The best ideas are always bad ideas.”

Tony laughed, melting with that rumble to the sensitive parts of his throat.  “Steve, I’m not…  I’m not–”

“Perfect?  Neither am I.  And I’m not looking for perfect.  Not looking for easy.  Don’t want that simple life, remember?  No farm and ideal family and American dream…”

“God, Steve…”

“Want you, whatever that means.  Want to share _your_ life.”  That sensuous rumble against Tony’s throat made Tony shiver.  He was shivering, _shivering,_ desperate for more, and he ran his hands under Steve’s shirt and up his back and letting himself _feel_ it this time.  Every inch of smooth skin.  Every ripple of powerful muscle.  He closed his eyes.  _God Almighty._ And he was back to trying to reconcile this dream with reality.  He’d fallen asleep somewhere, faceplanted on his desk, passed out in his bathroom.  He was hallucinating.  He had to be.  He’d died and gone right to heaven.  Maybe he really was as good as Steve thought he was.  Maybe–

“Tony?”

Tony opened his eyes.  “Alright.  You convinced me.  Let’s hook up.”

Steve laughed before kissing him again.  “Sir, yes, sir.”

* * *

The next morning, Tony staggered into the communal kitchen in search of coffee.  He still couldn’t figure out how to work the dumb percolator in Steve’s suite, and he was too sleepy to try, so off he went on a noble quest for modern-day caffeine.  The elevator deposited him on the right floor, and the second he stepped off of it, he smelled the aroma of a freshly brewed pot.  That helped him find his way with only minimal staggering and yawning.

Barton and Romanoff were already there at the breakfast bar with Banner, enjoying said coffee and some pastries and fruit.  Clint raised his cup at Tony’s less than graceful entrance.  “Morning, Stark!”

Tony stretched before scratching at his shoulder, walking into the kitchen with slightly better coordination.  “Hey.  When’d you guys get back?”

“This morning,” Natasha responded.  She was looking over some tablets placed before her on the gleaming granite counter top, a steaming cup beside her as well as a plate of melon.  Both she and Clint looked healthy and well-rested, though she was her normally prickly self.  She barely glanced up at him at all as he passed.  “Heard you tried to poison Rogers.”

Tony stopped mid-reach into the cabinet to get himself a coffee cup.  He turned to glare at Banner, to which the other man shrugged.  “Well, you couldn’t have expected it to be a secret.”

He hadn’t really, but it also didn’t mean Bruce needed to tell the super spy twins the second they got back from their mission.  “I did _not_ try to poison him.”

Clint was partway through devouring some sort of doughnut dripping in chocolate frosting.  “Word at HQ is that you very much succeeded.”  He chewed and shook his head.  “Like, what the hell, Tony?  We leave you two alone for what?   _A day?_ I know the honeymoon ended back on the helicarrier, but damn.  That’s harsh.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Tony argued, finally grasping his cup.  “It was an accident.  And he’s fine, so it’s all good.”

Natasha clearly didn’t think so.  “It ever occur to you two that if you just stopped aggravating each other so much, _accidents_ like this wouldn’t happen?  Crazy talk, I know.”

“Definitely.”  Tony couldn’t help himself.  He liked teasing Romanoff almost as much as he liked teasing Steve, and he felt just a bit like he was walking on cloud nine this morning.  “Definitely crazy, I mean.  Not that we should stop aggravating each other, because that’s impossible.”

She coolly arched an eyebrow, not amused.  “You could _try_ to get along with him.  In fact, you _will_ try, because we have a team meeting this afternoon with Fury and Hill, and I am in no mood to sit and watch you two make murder faces at each other.”

“But murder face is by far my best face,” Tony pouted, pouring himself a cup from the carafe.

“Not nearly.  Where is the Cap, anyway?”

“No idea.”  He took a rather loud slurp of his coffee.  “Wasn’t my turn to watch him.  Been there, done that.”  He wasn’t about to explain that he’d left a very naked, very satisfied, and very recently debauched Captain America back in bed, complaining that Tony was a genius and could therefore just figure out how to use a damn percolator for crying out loud and not have to _leave._   Tony had silenced him with a kiss and promised to come right back.

Which meant he needed to get a move-on.  “I love catching up with you guys, really, I do, but I gotta go.”  He leaned between Natasha and Clint to snatch a doughnut off the plate.

Natasha was faster, though, and grabbed his shirt instead.  It was one of Steve’s.  One of his gray ones.  She pulled the collar down.  “Is that a hickey?”

Normally Tony would have made some sort of inappropriate joke or brushed off the inquiry, but he actually froze, panicked for a second that they’d put two and two together.  Steve missing and him wearing Steve’s shirt and the array of love bites and marks (an actual array of them – she’d find more if she went looking) all down his chest.

But apparently the thought of them sleeping together was too outrageous for the rest of the team that no one even seemed to consider it.  Bruce looked absolutely perplexed, squinting at Tony.  “When the hell did you hook up with someone last night?  When I came back, JARVIS said you were sleeping.  Recovering, he said.  Taking some ‘well-deserved leisure time’, as he put it.”  Tony laughed.  He couldn’t help it.  _JARVIS, you sneaky…_   Bruce’s lips turned in a confused, annoyed frown.  “I needed your input on some things.”

“Well, I’m crafty like that.  And it was well-deserved.  And you can get my input later.”

Bruce didn’t look amused.  “Tony–”

“See you at the meeting!”  And with that, he snatched his doughnut and took off in a brisk walk down the hallway, grinning like a fool the whole way.  Whatever ruse he thought he was pulling wouldn’t last; Natasha at the very least was too smart not to figure it out.  And she’d convince Barton and Banner that it _had_ be true, because opposites attracted and the amount of bickering and bantering Steve and he had done could only lead to one place and all that, and they’d deny it probably because it seemed totally implausible that Iron Man and Captain America could get past their differences.

They’d be wrong, _so wrong,_ and Tony suspected that by the time the Avengers assembled later that afternoon, the proverbial cat would be out of the bag.

But for now it felt good to have this little secret.  He finished his doughnut on the way back and then slipped into Steve’s suite on silent footfalls, basking in the warmth of it all, only to find Steve in the kitchen.  Cooking.  In only his underwear.  _Again._   He had a great case of bedhead, but he looked absolutely divine just like this, all that flawless skin on open display (which Tony had touched and kissed and marked up himself, even if all signs of what they’d done last night were long gone thanks to the serum).  He’d know they were there, that Steve was his as much as he was Steve’s.

Steve had a collection of skillets going, and the counter was cluttered with ingredients for pancakes and other breakfast foods.  He turned to glance over his shoulder, the muscles of his back moving so entrancingly as he did.  Tony could _definitely_ get used to this.  “Hey, did you find your coffee?”

“Yep.”  Tony came closer, setting his cup on the table as he did.  He wrapped his arms around Steve from behind, linking his hands together on the other man’s stomach and kissing the back of his shoulder.  “You didn’t have to cook.”

“Figured I owed you breakfast for, well, everything.”  Steve grinned.  “And I told you.  I can handle the stove.”

“Never doubted it, Cap.”  He played with the waistband of Steve’s gray boxer briefs, thinking about how terrified he’d been to take them off when Steve had been sick.  And about how Steve had _begged_ him last night to do the very same.  _Forbidden dream._   Not so forbidden anymore.

Not a dream, either.

He grinned, kissed Steve’s shoulder more aggressively, nipped even and darted his fingers down.  “We have a few hours to kill before we have to go to HQ,” he purred suggestively.  “What do you say to watching TV after this?  In bed?  Naked?  I still have to educate you about the wonders of that.”

Steve’s breath hitched a little as Tony’s fingers crawled lower.  “I’m gonna burn breakfast,” he complained half-heartedly.

“Shame.”

Steve laughed and wriggled away.  “Yes, it would be.  And yes, definitely yes, to your question.  Now go sit down.”

Tony whined petulantly but let go all the same, heading over to the table that Steve had already set with plates and forks.  Glasses with orange juice and milk.  Tony sat, and a second later a heaping, steaming plate of pancakes was set in front of him.  “God, I love you,” Tony said, reaching for the syrup and pouring a ton of it on the pile.

“Wait.”  Down came another plate, this one loaded with scrambled eggs and eggs over-easy and some sunny-side.  Tony looked up at Steve to find him shrugging at the variety and overabundance.  “Didn’t know how you liked ’em.”

“Any way you’re making them, babe.”

“Then there you are.”  Steve dropped a kiss in his hair, grinning deviously.  “With extra poison.”

Would any of this have happened otherwise? Tony dug into his eggs and smiled.  “One can only hope.”

 

**THE END**


End file.
